The prevalence of psychological distress caused by a mismatch between birth sex and gender identity, formally known as gender dysphoria, likely rose 50-fold nationwide between 2011 and 2021, suggests an analysis of primary care data in England and published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood. This means the condition is still uncommon, with fewer than 1 in 200 17-18 year olds affected, but levels of concurrent anxiety, depression, and self harm are high. And access to timely care is a live issue for young people and their families, a second feedback study shows. Most previously ...

Over the course of two decades, the lifespan of college graduates increased by 2.5 years to 84.2 years. If they were a country, their life expectancy would have ranked fourth globally. By contrast, the lifespan of those who didn’t earn a high school diploma remained at 73.5 years. If they were a country, their life expectancy would have ranked 137th globally. SEATTLE, Wash., Jan. 23, 2025 – Across more than 3,000 US counties, vast geographic differences with a widening gap were registered between the least and most educated, with a longer lifespan for those with a higher level of education. That’s ...

While climate change is likely to present significant challenges to agriculture in coming decades, it could also mean that crops such as chickpeas, soyabeans and oranges are widely grown across the UK, and home-produced hummus, tofu and marmalade are a common sight on our supermarket shelves by 2080. A new study led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) in collaboration with the University of East Anglia (UEA) predicts that future warmer temperatures in this country would be suitable for a variety ...

Researchers from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (HRS) recently published a study that found a link between impairments in physical function and hospital readmission risk among adults 50 years of age and older. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 17% of Medicare beneficiaries in the United States returned to the hospital within 30 days of discharge between 2016 and 2020, posing burdens on healthcare systems and patients, alike. “Physical function is a crucial indicator of underlying ...

DALLAS, January 23, 2025 — The American Heart Association, a global force changing the future of health for all, is championing student health and well-being by awarding financial grants to seven schools nationwide. These grants, provided through the Association’s Kids Heart Challenge™ and American Heart Challenge™ programs, enable schools to invest in resources like fitness equipment, water bottle filling stations, and educational tools to support healthier environments. By directly funding these in-school resources, the Association aims to foster healthy habits in youth to combat issues like childhood obesity—which, according to ...

A team of researchers from NYU Tandon’s C2SMARTER — a U.S. Department of Transportation-funded Tier 1 University Transportation Center — has received an NVIDIA Academic Grant Program award to develop an advanced simulation system aimed at improving emergency response in urban areas. The project, called NanoDT (Nano Digital Twin), will create a detailed virtual replica (or “digital twin”) of Downtown Brooklyn that can help emergency responders better navigate accident scenes and ...

HOUSTON, January 22, 2025 — Marcus Freeman, head coach at the University of Notre Dame, was named college football Coach of the Year at the American Heart Association’s Paul “Bear” Bryant Awards, presented by Marathon Oil. The 39th annual awards program benefits the American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary health organization devoted to a world of longer, healthier lives for all. “We are honored to award Coach Freeman this year’s Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year Award, recognizing his exemplary efforts ...

Cancer is vicious. In 2025, it is expected to cause more than 618,000 U.S. deaths — nearly twice the combined populations of Merced and Modesto. Each year, almost half of this nation, young and old, is touched by the disease through personal diagnosis or an afflicted loved one. Jeff Yoshimi joined the 50% when his wife, Sandy, learned she had breast cancer. The blighted cells had spread to some lymph nodes. Alongside Sandy during one of many overnight hospital stays, Yoshimi drifted in and out of sleep, sifting through ideas ...

“Fight-or-flight” is not an option for plants, unfortunately, when it comes to pathogen attacks. Instead, plants opt for “do-or-die.” A deeper insight into the genetic mechanisms that enable plants to resist pathogen infections has equipped researchers with tools to tackle the most devastating pathogens in agriculture. Using advanced RNA sequencing, researchers have recently uncovered how varieties of soybean respond to different types of soybean cyst nematodes (SCNs), with potential implications for developing more resilient crops and reducing reliance on chemical treatments. Published ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – When a grocery store starts selling beer, its sales grow beyond just six-packs and cases: Households, and beer-purchasing households in particular, visit the store more frequently and increase their total monthly grocery expenditures, according to new Cornell research.  The finding has important implications for the intensely competitive grocery business, which operates on razor-thin profit margins between 1 and 3%, well below other retail sectors. One approach to boosting profits is employing “loss leaders,” specific products sold below cost to attract customers to a store and encourage them to buy other, more profitable ...

Key takeaways: Pulmonary fibrosis in patients with COVID-19 tends to resolve, while idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis always progresses Scientists believe key immune elements – cells and genes – may explain resolution versus progression of the disease “Both diseases are caused by injury to alveolar epithelial cells in the lungs. In the case of COVID-19, the injury is viral and acute and in the case of IPF, the injury is unknown but repetitive and chronic — so that may explain the different patterns of pulmonary fibrosis progression.’’ TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 23, 2025) ...

Bronx, NY—In the global effort to combat climate change, large-scale, plant-based strategies such as planting forests and cultivating biofuels are an increasingly important part of countries’ plans to reduce their overall carbon emissions, but a landmark new study in the journal Science finds that well-intended strategies could have unforeseen impacts on biodiversity and that, in general, restoring forests has the most beneficial effect on wildlife. The authors, including New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) Assistant Curator Evelyn Beaury, Ph.D., argue that policy makers and conservation officials should consider impacts on biodiversity when evaluating the ...

A new statistical tool that combines multiple clinical and pathologic factors with a patient's 21-gene Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score® result provides more accurate estimates about that patient’s breast cancer prognosis and their potential benefit from chemotherapy than either the Recurrence Score® result or clinical factors alone.  The tool could be used in counseling patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), HER2-negative breast cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes, and could improve shared decision-making ...

Chirality refers to objects that cannot be superimposed to their mirror images through any combination of rotations or translations, much like the distinct left and right hands of a human. In chiral crystals, the spatial arrangement of atoms confers a specific "handedness", which, for example, influences their optical and electrical properties. The Hamburg-Oxford team focused on so-called antiferro-chirals, a type of non-chiral crystals reminiscent of antiferro-magnetic materials, in which magnetic ...

By definition, robots can’t feel empathy — it requires being able to relate to another person’s human experience, to put yourself in their shoes. But according to new U of T Scarborough research, artificial intelligence (AI) can create empathetic responses more reliably and consistently than humans, even when compared to professionals whose job relies on empathizing with those in need.  “AI doesn’t get tired,” says Dariya Ovsyannikova (HBSc 2023 UTSC), lab manager in Professor Michael Inzlicht’s lab at U of T Scarborough ...

Quantum dots are tiny semiconductor nano materials with color-tunable and high-efficiency photoluminescence, which have been successfully applied in different display technology such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and micro light-emitting diodes (Micro-LEDs). In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewards the discovery and development of quantum dots. Perovskite quantum dots (PQDs) are emerging display materials with high absorption coefficient, low cost and easy processability, and less environmental impact. ...

Researchers at Rutgers University have found that adverse childhood experiences can make people more sensitive to potential threats from others, which in turn increases their risk of engaging in defensive gun use in adulthood. Their study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, used cross-sectional data from a subsample of 3,130 adults with firearm access drawn from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. Those surveyed were asked about their childhood experiences with abuse and neglect, their levels of social distrust and sensitivity to perceived threats, depressive symptoms and their self-reported use of a gun for self-defense. The authors first assessed the association ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — In the quest to take the “forever” out of “forever chemicals,” bacteria might be our ally.  Most remediation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) involves adsorbing and trapping them, but certain microbes can actually break apart the strong chemical bonds that allow these chemicals to persist for so long in the environment. Now, a University at Buffalo-led team has identified a strain of bacteria that can break down and transform at least three types of PFAS, and, perhaps even more crucially, some of ...

Researchers have measured the thinking time of London taxi drivers - famous for their knowledge of more than 26,000 streets across the city - as part of a study into the future of AI route-mapping. Unlike a satnav, which calculates every possible route until it gets to the destination, researchers at the University of York, in collaboration with University College London and the Champalimaud Foundation, found that London taxi drivers rationally plan each route by prioritising the most challenging areas first and filling in the rest of the route around these tricky points. Current computational models to understand ...

Rising carbon dioxide levels affect more than just the climate; they also affect the chemistry of the oceans. When saltwater absorbs carbon dioxide, it becomes acidic, which alters the aquatic animal ecosystem. But how exactly does ocean acidification impact animals whose genetic makeup can shift depending on environmental cues? A study published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology addresses this question through the “eyes” of oysters. Oysters, unlike mammals and birds, do not have chromosomes that dictate their sex at the ...

        Images   More than a third of Detroit residents (36%) can't get from place to place in a safe or timely manner.    This is the main finding of a new study led by Alexandra Murphy, associate director of social science research at Mcity and assistant research scientist at U-M's Poverty Solutions, and first author Lydia Wileden, a U-M alum and assistant research professor at the University of Connecticut.    They measured this with a tool created by Murphy and her team called the Transportation Security ...

Researchers led by electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a better way to perform the comparative analysis of entire genomes. This approach can be used to study relationships between different species across geological time scales.  This new approach is poised to unlock discoveries regarding how evolution has shaped present-day genomes and also how the tree of life is organized. The new method, named CASTER, is described in a paper published in Science on 23 January 2025.  CASTER ...

Researchers at the Crick have uncovered which genes on the Y chromosome regulate the development of sperm and impact fertility in male mice. This research could help us understand why some men don’t produce enough sperm and are infertile. Males typically have one copy of the Y chromosome and one copy of the X chromosome, whereas females typically have two X chromosomes. Scientists know that the Y chromosome is essential for male fertility, but which genes are the most important and how they work is less clear. In research published today in Science, a research team at the Crick resolved this question by generating thirteen different ...

Male ruff sandpipers engaging in the act of mating typically fall into one of three groups, with variations in how aggressive they are and how showy their plumage is, among other factors. Now, a new study reports a single gene – HSD17B2 – drives these dramatic differences among male ruff sandpiper morphs. The findings show how evolutionary changes in a single gene's structure, sequence, and regulation can drive significant diversity within a single species. The androgen testosterone plays a key role in male reproductive development. It influences ...

In a new study involving whole-genome data, researchers present “CASTER,” a tool that uses arrangements in DNA sequences known as site patterns to infer “species trees,” which are diagrams that depict the evolutionary relationships among species. The tool, which performs with exceptional accuracy and scalability and overcomes the limitations of traditional phylogenetic methods, offers transformative potential for evolutionary research. The growing availability of genomic data has revitalized efforts to construct precise species trees and model gene tree variations. However, the methodology for utilizing genome-wide data lags behind data availability. While traditional ...