(Memphis, Tenn. – February 7, 2024) St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital today announced Sara M. Federico, MD, has been named director of the institution’s Solid Tumor Division within the Department of Oncology. Federico is an internationally recognized leader in pediatric oncology whose contributions have defined the landscape of treatment for high-risk childhood solid tumors, such as neuroblastoma. “Dr. Federico’s experience will pave the way for new discoveries that will help advance cure rates for patients with high-risk cancers by identifying, testing and optimizing novel therapeutic strategies,” said Julie R. ...

INDIANAPOLIS – Pioneering cancer researcher Craig B. Thompson, MD, has been named the 2024 winner of the August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research. Awarded by the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Watanabe Prize is one of the nation's largest and most prestigious awards recognizing individuals focused on shepherding scientific discoveries into new therapies for patients. The prize is awarded to a senior investigator who has made a significant contribution to the field of translational science.  Thompson is the former president and chief executive officer ...

Generative artificial intelligence platforms, from ChatGPT to Midjourney, grabbed headlines in 2023. But GenAI can do more than create collaged images and help write emails — it can also design new drugs to treat disease. Today, scientists use advanced technology to design new synthetic drug compounds with the right properties and characteristics, also known as “de novo drug design.” However, current methods can be labor-, time-, and cost-intensive. Inspired by ChatGPT’s popularity and wondering if this approach could speed up the drug design process, scientists in the Schmid ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – The drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction may also be associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in the February 7, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that erectile dysfunction drugs reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. It only shows an association. Erectile dysfunction drugs, which work by dilating blood vessels to allow more blood ...

Imagine a coffee cup sitting on a table. Now, imagine a book partially obscuring the cup. As humans, we still know what the coffee cup is even though we can't see all of it. But a robot might be confused.  Robots in warehouses and even around our houses struggle to identify and pick up objects if they are too close together, or if a space is cluttered. This is because robots lack what psychologists call "object unity," or our ability to identify things even when we can't see all of them. Researchers at the University of Washington ...

“[...] the results of the studies presented in this review will hopefully provide the impetus for conducting additional preclinical and clinical studies to evaluate RUX in the setting of MM as well as other types of cancer.” BUFFALO, NY- February 7, 2024 – A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on February 5, 2024, entitled, “Preclinical and clinical evaluation of the Janus Kinase inhibitor ruxolitinib in multiple myeloma.” In this new paper, researchers Ashley Del Dosso, Elizabeth Tadevosyan, and James ...

Research Highlights: Although giving blood thinners along with clot-busting medication may help in treating heart attacks, it did not improve 90-day outcomes in people with clot-caused strokes. Enrollment in a large clinical trial, which had been planned to include more than 1,200 patients with ischemic stroke (clot-caused stroke), was halted after an independent data and safety monitoring board found no indication of benefit among the first 500 patients. The data analysis for the 500 enrolled participants found giving blood thinners along with clot-busting medication did not increase the risk of bleeding into the brain. Embargoed ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As climate change affects the oceans, coastal communities, particularly those at the front lines of ocean warming and sea level rise, are facing pressures that could threaten their access to aquatic foods. “Climate change and other economic shocks are impacting how people access seafood, and typically households that are most reliant on seafood, such as those in Pacific Island countries, are most at risk,” said Jacob Eurich, a research associate at UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute, and a fisheries scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. Which is why, he added, it is necessary to increase food system resilience in the area, ...

In the US, people of color who are killed by violence or die by suicide lose more potential years of life than white victims, according to a new study, which also explored factors that may contribute to these disparities. Gregory Zimmerman of Northeastern University in Boston, US, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 7, 2024. Mounting evidence suggests that, among victims of violence in the US, the average number of potential years of life lost—how much longer the victim would have lived if they survived—is greater for people of color than for white people. To deepen understanding, Zimmerman ...

Almost 1 in 5 Indian adults aged 60+ show signs of mild neurocognitive disorder, according to nationally representative data - more than previously recognized ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0297220 Article Title: Prevalence of DSM-5 mild and major neurocognitive disorder in India: Results from the LASI-DAD Author Countries: USA, UK, India Funding: This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG051125 (JL), R01 AG030153 (JL), U01 AG064948 (JL), R01 AG070953 (ALG)). The funders had no role in study design, ...

More biodiverse nature landscapes may better buffer against stress  - but only if you notice the difference, per experiment using videos of urban woodland ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0297179 Article Title: Does increasing biodiversity in an urban woodland setting promote positive emotional responses in humans? A stress recovery experiment using 360-degree videos of an urban woodland Author Countries: UK Funding: SF received a PhD Studentship funding from the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, ...

The period of austerity politics from 2012 to 2018 was associated with steeper increases in frailty with age compared to pre-austerity between 2002 and 2010, according to a new study published February 7th in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Carys Pugh of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues. Previous research has linked a stalling in life expectancy growth to austerity politics implemented in response to the 2008-2009 financial crisis. However, the mechanism through which public spending cuts are associated with decreased life expectancy ...

An international team of scientists has created a tool that can aid in increasing climate awareness and climate action globally by highlighting messaging themes shown to be effective through experimental research. The web-based tool, and the methods undergirding its creation, appears in the journal Science Advances. The tool stems from a study involving nearly 250 researchers that drew more than 59,000 participants from 63 countries, including Algeria, China, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, and the United States.  “We ...

Tiny external structures in the wax coating of blueberries give them their blue colour, researchers at the University of Bristol can reveal. This applies to lots of fruits that are the same colour including damsons, sloes and juniper berries. In the study, published today in Science Advances, researchers show why blueberries are blue despite the dark red colour of the pigments in the fruit skin. Their blue colour is instead provided by a layer of wax that surrounds the fruit which is made up of miniature structures that scatter blue and UV light. This gives blueberries their blue appearance to humans and blue-UV to birds. The chromatic blue-UV reflectance ...

Researchers with McMaster University and Denmark-based pharmaceutical company ALK-Abello A/S have made a groundbreaking discovery: a new cell that remembers allergies. The discovery gives scientists and researchers a new target in treating allergies and could lead to new therapeutics. The research, published in Science Translational Medicine on Feb. 7, 2024, coins the brand-new cell as a type-2 memory B cell (MBC2). “We’ve discovered a type of memory B cell that had unique characteristics and a unique gene ...

The speed at which England’s oldest adults became frailer accelerated during the UK Government’s era of austerity politics, according to a new study.  Researchers say that the rate of frailty in people aged 85 and over in England increased 50 per cent faster per year between 2012 and 2018 compared with the preceding eight years.   The impact of frailty – a decline in a person’s mental and physical resilience to illness and injury – on the oldest in society must be considered should any new austerity measures be introduced, experts warn.    The study, led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh’s ...

Tea Maho and Robert R. Reisz University of Toronto Mississauga   Kilat, the largest living lizard at the Toronto Metro Zoo, like other members of his species (Varanus komodoensis), truly deserves to be called the Komodo Dragon! Its impressive size and the way it looks at you and tracks your every move makes you realize that it is an apex predator, not unlike a ferocious theropod dinosaur. So, it is not surprising when you look around at his enclosure to find that there are shed teeth sparkling on the ground, a common find when ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA – A tiny device built by scientists at MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology could be used to improve the safety and effectiveness of cell therapy treatments for patients suffering from spinal cord injuries. In cell therapy, clinicians create what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells by reprogramming some skin or blood cells taken from a patient. To treat a spinal cord injury, they would coax these pluripotent stem cells to become progenitor cells, which are destined to differentiate into spinal cord cells. These progenitors are then transplanted back into ...

An Argonne team developing materials for solid-state batteries took an unexpected detour to investigate tiny short-circuits known as soft-shorts. Their insights will benefit battery researchers around the world. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have shed important new light on what the early signs of battery failure look like. Their study — which relates to a condition called soft-shorts — provides the research community with valuable knowledge and methods to design better electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The Argonne team’s research focused on all-solid batteries with anodes (negative electrodes) ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Predicting the trajectory of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like autism or schizophrenia is difficult because they can be influenced by many different genetic and environmental factors. A new study, led by Penn State researchers, demonstrates that evaluating parents for their manifestation of traits of these disorders — and related diseases like depression and anxiety — may provide a more accurate method of predicting the prevalence, and potentially severity, of the disorders in affected children than screening for genetic variants alone. This is likely due, at least in part, to genetic variants the parents transmit to the ...

Birmingham, AL (February 7, 2024) – Today, a team of scientists is pleased to announce the discovery of a new fossil shark species from Alabama, USA. The team is led by Jun Ebersole, Director of Collections, McWane Science Center, Birmingham, AL, David Cicimurri, Curator of Natural History, South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, and T. Lynn Harrell, Jr., Paleontologist and Fossil Collections Curator at the Geological Survey of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The shark is a new species of Palaeohypotodus (pronounced pale-ee-oh-hype-oh-toe-duss), which means “ancient small-eared tooth,” in reference to the small needle-like fangs present on the sides of the teeth. It has ...

About The Study: In patients presenting at thrombectomy-capable stroke centers, the benefit associated with intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) plus thrombectomy versus thrombectomy alone was time dependent and statistically significant only if the time from symptom onset to expected administration of IVT was short in this individual participant data meta-analysis (n = 2,313) of six randomized clinical trials.  Authors: Johannes Kaesmacher, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Bern in Bern, Switzerland, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 7, 2024 Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu ## Many Hookah Manufacturers Have Not Complied with FDA-Mandated Nicotine Warning Labels Only half of the hookah packages assessed in a new study included the required nicotine warnings, two years after this federal regulation was implemented to alert consumers about the health risks of nicotine addiction. Since August 2018, the US Food & Drug Administration has mandated that all hookah (also known as waterpipe tobacco or shisha) manufacturers include a nicotine warning ...

About The Study: In this exploratory analysis of a randomized clinical trial of 336 patients with extensive ischemic stroke, endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) improved clinical outcomes across a wide spectrum of infarct volumes, although enrollment of patients with minimal penumbra volume was low. In EVT-treated patients, clinical outcomes worsened as presenting ischemic injury estimates increased.  Authors: Amrou Sarraj, M.D., of University Hospital Cleveland Medical Center—Case Western ...

About The Study: In patients with cryptogenic stroke and evidence of atrial cardiopathy without atrial fibrillation, oral anticoagulant therapy with apixaban did not significantly reduce recurrent stroke risk compared with aspirin in this randomized clinical trial that included 1,015 participants.  Authors: Hooman Kamel, M.D., of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2023.27188) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...