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 ...

Leo P, a small galaxy and a distant neighbor of the Milky Way, is lighting the way for astronomers to better understand star formation and how a galaxy grows. In a study published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team of researchers led by Kristen McQuinn, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Rutgers University-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences, has reported finding that Leo P “reignited,” reactivating during a significant period on the timeline of the universe, producing stars when many other small galaxies didn’t.  By ...

A team of astronomers led by University of Arizona researcher Catherine Fielder has obtained the most detailed images of a small galaxy and its surroundings, revealing features typically associated with much larger galaxies. The observations provide a rare, elusive glimpse into how small galaxies form and evolve, suggesting that the mechanisms fueling galaxy growth may be more universal than previously thought. Fielder presented the findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland, during a press briefing ...

Carbon capture, or the isolation and removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during industrial processes like cement mixing or steel production, is widely regarded as a key component of fighting climate change. Existing carbon capture technologies, such as amine scrubbing, are hard to deploy because they require significant energy to operate and involve corrosive compounds.  As a promising alternative, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed carbon capture systems that use molecules called ...

The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) has been awarded a $2.25 million grant over three years from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. This funding establishes the Inertial Fusion Energy Science and Technology Accelerated Research (IFE-STAR) ecosystem that brings together academia, national laboratories, and the private sector to develop a clean, safe, and virtually limitless energy source, built on US leadership in inertial fusion. Inertial ...

For the first time ever, a complex sense of touch for individuals living with spinal cord injuries is a step closer to reality. A new study published in Science, paves the way for complex touch sensation through brain stimulation, whilst using an extracorporeal bionic limb, that is attached to a chair or wheelchair. The researchers, who are all part of the US-based Cortical Bionics Research Group, have discovered a unique method for encoding natural touch sensations of the hand via specific microstimulation patterns in implantable electrodes in the brain. This allows individuals with spinal cord injuries ...

A novel field experiment in Austria reveals that compounding climate conditions – namely drought, warming, and elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2 ) – could fundamentally reshape how water moves through soils in temperate grasslands. The findings provide new insights into post-drought soil water flow, in particular. Soil water, though a minuscule fraction of Earth's total water resources, plays a critical role in sustaining terrestrial life on Earth by regulating biogeochemical cycles, surface energy balance, and plant productivity. Soils also govern ...

Severe droughts are becoming hotter, longer, and increasingly devastating to ecosystems as climate change accelerates, according to a new study, which reports that temperate grasslands, including in parts of the United States, are facing the worst effects. The findings provide a global quantitative understanding of multiyear droughts (MYDs) – prolonged events lasting years or decades – and offer a benchmark for understanding their global trends and impacts. As droughts become more frequent ...

Seven Australopithecus specimens uncovered at the Sterkfontein fossil site in South Africa were herbivorous hominins who did not eat substantial amounts of meat, according to a new study by Tina Lüdecke and colleagues. Lüdecke et al. analyzed organic nitrogen and carbonate carbon isotopes extracted from tooth enamel in the fossil specimens to determine the hominin diets. Some researchers have hypothesized that the incorporation of animal-based foods in early hominin diets led to increased brain size, smaller gut size ...