Astrophysicists led by a team from Trinity College Dublin have – for the first time – imaged a large number of exocomet belts around nearby stars, and the tiny pebbles within them. The crystal-clear images show light being emitted from these millimetre-sized pebbles within the belts that orbit 74 nearby stars of a wide variety of ages – from those that are just emerging from birth to those in more mature systems like our own Solar System. The REASONS (REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars) study ...

We have all been told to avoid direct sunlight between 12 noon and 3 p.m., seek out shade and put on sunscreen and a hat. Nevertheless, most of us have been experienced sunburn at least once. The skin turns bright red, feels irritated and needs cooling. You may also have been told that sunburn damages the DNA. But that is not the full truth, the researchers responsible for a new study conducted at the University of Copenhagen and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) explain. “Sunburn damages the DNA, leading to cell death and inflammation. So the textbooks say. But in ...

  UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 5:00AM (UK TIME) ON FRIDAY 17TH JANUARY 2025   People who speak with accents perceived as ‘working-class’ including those from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford and London risk being stereotyped as more likely to have committed a crime, and becoming victims of injustice, a new study suggests.   Received pronunciation (RP) accent perceived as highest status and less likely to commit crimes with the exception of a sexual offence.  Liverpool’s accent most closely associated with criminal behaviour in general. Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish accents perceived more positively ...

The way you talk says a lot about you — but what people think it says may not be true. While no accent is better than any other, people use accents as markers for identifying and stereotyping social groups. In the justice system, these accent stereotypes could influence perceptions of guilt, leading to discrimination. Scientists collaborating on the Improving Voice Identification Procedures project explored this by testing participants’ perceptions of ten different accents heard around the UK. They found that speakers with accents considered lower-status were considered more ...

Perhaps you’ve heard the story of Peter Parker, raised by his aunt and uncle after the death of his parents only to see his uncle murdered by the same criminal the radioactive spider-bitten teen neglected to apprehend that very day. His guilt drives him to become Spider-Man.   But childhood trauma doesn’t always inspire super-heroics. Heath Ledger’s psychotic Joker, as seen in 2008 film The Dark Knight, recounts tales of horrific abuse by a father who disfigures him. It’s a stark contrast to his heroic nemesis Batman, who saw his parents gunned down in ...

For the high-performance computing in a WAN environment, the geographical locations of national supercomputing centers are scattered and the network topology is complex, so it is difficult to form a unified view of resources. To aggregate the widely dispersed storage resources of national supercomputing centers in China, the team led by Zhisheng Huo have previously proposed a global virtual data space named GVDS. However, the GVDS suffers from performance bottlenecks in data migration and access across WANs. To solve the problems, ...

Excessive sugar consumption is linked to several non-communicable diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. Animals naturally crave sugar, and uncontrolled sugar preferences can lead to high sugar intake, raising the risk of hyperglycemia and metabolic diseases. Previous research suggests that food cravings in humans are driven by signals from the gut to the brain, highlighting the gut's crucial role in shaping dietary preferences. However, the regulation of sugar preference is complex, and the specific influence of gut microbes remains unclear. In a study published in Nature Microbiology, ...

Megakaryocytes (MKs), known for their role in platelet production, have emerged as critical players in immune responses, showcasing versatility in both physiological and pathological contexts. Recent advances in technology have unveiled the diverse immune functions of MKs, which express immune sensors and participate in immune activities, thus expanding their traditional role beyond hemostasis and coagulation. This comprehensive review delves into the multifaceted immune roles of MKs, highlighting their distinct immunological roles under ...

A new Cochrane review has found that calorie labelling of food on menus and products leads people to choose slightly fewer calories.  The research team, led by scientists from UCL, Bath Spa University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, examined evidence from 25 studies on the impact of calorie labelling on food selection and consumption. They found that calorie labels in supermarkets, restaurants and other food outlets led to a small reduction in the calories people selected and purchased. The average reduction was 1.8%, which would equate ...

Niigata and Tokyo, Japan - In recent years, advancements in dialysis therapy and the growing number of elderly patients starting dialysis have contributed to the aging of the overall dialysis population. Consequently, malnutrition-related conditions such as sarcopenia, frailty, and protein energy wasting (PEW) have become significant issues for dialysis patients. Nutritional interventions, including nutritional counseling, oral supplements, and intradialytic parenteral nutrition (IDPN), are recommended to address these challenges. On dialysis days, patients tend to consume less ...

New INFORMS Information Systems Research Study Key Takeaways: The AI model achieves approximately 90% classification precision in predicting ICU length of stay, enabling hospitals to more effectively optimize resource management. Clear, evidence-based explanations provided by the model empower ICU doctors to make better-informed decisions regarding patient care. Real-world testing with ICU clinicians demonstrated the model’s potential to enhance care efficiency, reduce hospital costs and improve patient outcomes.   BALTIMORE, MD, January 16, 2025 – Intensive care units (ICUs) face mounting pressure to effectively manage resources while delivering ...

Continental European snakes, geckos and Italian wall lizards are making their way to northern Europe undetected among imports of ornamental olive trees destined for gardens and green spaces.  These hitchhiking intruders can become invasive pests that cause extensive damage to the natural environment - as has happened in previously snake-free islands of the Mediterranean like Majorca. They’re also a red flag for a bigger problem: the range of potentially serious agricultural and environmental pests being unwittingly imported to Britain and ...

Desert lizards are facing a ‘cost-of-living’ squeeze as global temperatures continue to rise, a new study finds.   For a lizard, the 'cost-of-living' is tightly linked to its body temperature, which dictates both how much food it needs and whether it can go outside to feed. Desert lizards are especially challenged because food is sparse, and it is often too hot to forage.   Published today in Science, the study found climate warming can ‘squeeze’ desert lizard energy budgets by increasing the food they need just ...

Stem Cell Reports, the peer-reviewed, open access, online journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) is seeking highly motivated and accomplished early career scientists to join the Early Career Scientist Editorial Board (ECEB). This group of distinguished early career scientists will have the opportunity to: Advise on journal content and programming such as special Issues, podcast content, and other initiatives, Receive mentoring from associate editors, Attend the annual editorial board meeting Build their professional network and connections, and Serve as an ambassador ...

Our data-driven world demands more—more capacity, more efficiency, more computing power. To meet society’s insatiable need for electronic speed, physicists have been pushing the burgeoning field of spintronics. Traditional electronics use the charge of electrons to encode, store and transmit information. Spintronic devices utilize both the charge and spin-orientation of electrons. By assigning a value to electron spin (up=0 and down=1), spintronic devices offer ultra-fast, energy-efficient platforms. To develop viable spintronics, physicists must understand the quantum properties ...

The kids and grandkids of immigrants to the United States usually lose the ability to speak their heritage language fluently. Without access to the heritage language, second- and third-generation Americans may use distinct words and pronunciations in the dominant language, English, to assert their ethnic identities and connect to their communities. Sociolinguists have long viewed these shifts as markers of cultural change. Like differences in food, clothing and religion, differences in language are subtle ways that groups distinguish themselves along ethnic boundaries. Recent work has pivoted from asking what are the differences to why are there differences? How are they using language to carve ...

Tufts Unvisity Assistant Professor Elizabeth Setren in the Department of Economics at the School of Arts and Sciences has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Joe Biden. PECASE recognition is the highest honor given by the U.S. government for outstanding scientists and engineers who are early in their careers This year’s awardees are employed or funded by 14 governmental agencies. In Setren’s case, her recognition comes from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, and ...

The proportion of babies dying before and during labor after 41 weeks of gestation has fallen by 47% in Sweden in a relatively short time. This is the result of a major national study. The reduction has occurred since the procedures around induction have changed. A pregnancy normally lasts around 40 weeks. However, a fairly high proportion of women, 22%, pass their due date and are pregnant for 41 weeks or longer. Although Sweden generally has a very low risk of stillbirth and death within the first month of life, the risk increases the longer the pregnancy continues ...

Being lightweight is essential for space structures, particularly for tools used on already small, lightweight satellites. The ability to perform multiple functions is a bonus. To address these characteristics in a new way, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign successfully integrated flexible electronics with a three-ply, self-deployable boom that weighs only about 20 grams. “It's difficult to get commercial electronics integrated into these super thin structures,” said Xin Ning, an aerospace professor in The Grainger College of Engineering at U. of ...

A group of immune proteins called the inflammasome can help prevent blood stem cells from becoming malignant by removing certain receptors from their surfaces and blocking cancer gene activity, according to a preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The study, published Jan. 2 in Nature Immunology, may lead to therapies that target the earliest stages of cancer. The findings bolster the idea that the inflammasome has a dual role—it promotes inflammation associated with poor outcomes in late cancer stages, but early on, it can help prevent cells from becoming cancerous in the first ...

Across most of the Northeast, getting bitten by a blacklegged tick— also called a deer tick — is a risk during spring, summer, and fall. A new Dartmouth study, published in Parasites and Vectors, finds that 50% of adult blacklegged ticks carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease while 20% to 25% of the younger (nymph) blacklegged ticks carry the bacteria. A team of researchers from universities, health departments, and agricultural agencies from across the Northeast conducted a meta-analysis of data on how many blacklegged ticks there are and how many of them have the potential to pass pathogens ...

TUCSON, Arizona — The results of a clinical trial led by researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology showed that chemotherapy combining three different types of drugs did not improve overall survival for patients with advanced stage, inoperable biliary tract cancers. “Biliary tract cancer is comparatively rare, but it’s aggressive and spreads fast. Our accrual of more than 450 patients in a little more than two years really shows there is a need for new ways to help people with biliary tract cancer,” ...

PHILADELPHIA (January 16, 2025) – A new Health Affairs Health Policy Brief highlights the detrimental impact of recent state and federal policies that restrict discussions of “divisive concepts,” including structural racism. It warns that these policies undermine efforts to address health inequities and improve population health. “By limiting discussions of structural racism, these policies ignore the historical and environmental factors that shape health outcomes,” said co-author Derek Griffith, PhD,  the Risa Lavizzo-Mourey ...

NYU Tandon, collaborating institutions and industry partners have been awarded nearly $10 million to develop next generation communications technology.   The project, dubbed SALSA (Spectrally Agile Large-Scale Arrays), is funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to advance U.S. leadership in open, secure communications infrastructure. SALSA aims to create advanced wireless systems that operate in the "upper mid-band" spectrum — a region of frequencies relatively ...

In a recently published paper, NASA scientists use nearly 20 years of observations to show that the global water cycle is shifting in unprecedented ways. The majority of those shifts are driven by activities such as agriculture and could have impacts on ecosystems and water management, especially in certain regions. “We established with data assimilation that human intervention in the global water cycle is more significant than we thought,” said Sujay Kumar, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-author ...