NEW ORLEANS, March 17, 2024 — Kombucha is a fermented tea known for its health benefits and tangy kick. But brewers can find it challenging to keep kombucha’s alcohol levels low because the bacteria and yeast used in the fermentation process vary from batch to batch. Now, chemists from Shippensburg University are investigating ways to reliably minimize alcohol, tailor taste profiles and speed up the kombucha fermentation process to help home and commercial producers optimize their funky brews. The ...

*This is an early press release from the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) Venice 12-15 May. Please credit the Congress if using this material* Short-term very low calorie diets are safe for teenagers living with moderate to severe obesity when closely monitored by an experienced dietitian, new research to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024), has found.  In addition, many of the adolescents who took part in the Australian study found a very low calorie diet to be an acceptable way to lose weight, despite experiencing side-effects. Very low energy diets (VLED) typically involve taking in ≤ 800 calories per day and include meal replacements ...

Reproductive health experts from the Women’s Biomedical Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will present research at the 71th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Reproductive Investigation (SRI) in Vancouver, Canada from March 12-16. The doctors and researchers are available for interview about their findings; they can also provide commentary on other women’s health and female biology topics, breaking news, and studies.   PRESENTATIONS and POSTER SESSIONS (*All abstracts are under embargo until the below listed times*) Friday, March 15, 2024 9:00 -11:00 a.m. PT (12:00-2:00 ...

Research led by Amsterdam UMC across ten Dutch hospitals and two Italian hospitals has found that not placing a drain during surgery improves outcomes in patients undergoing a left-sided pancreatic resection, also known as ‘distal pancreatectomy’. The study, today published in Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, set out to confirm the safety of drainless surgery, as compared to the current routine practice of leaving a surgical drain. Ultimately, the study not only confirmed the safety of ‘drainless ...

An international, multisite phase 3 trial co-led by a University of Cincinnati researcher found Parkinson’s disease medication delivered through an infusion pump is safe and effective at reducing symptoms for longer periods of time. These results, published March 15 in the Lancet Neurology journal, could lead to additional treatment options for patients with the condition.  Parkinson’s symptoms such as tremors, slowness and stiffness are caused by low levels of dopamine in the body. For decades, doctors ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A heavy snowpack is fun for skiers and sledders, and it also acts like an open-air storage tank that melts away to provide water for drinking, irrigation and other purposes during dry months. But exactly how much water is held in snowpacks, and for how long? That information, critical to water managers around the globe, has taken on new clarity thanks to a new, more holistic calculation technique developed by researchers in the Oregon State University College of Engineering. “Water managers tend to consider a portfolio of infrastructure options – surface water reservoirs, groundwater ...

Amsterdam, March 15, 2024 – Ten years ago, the United States passed into federal law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), broadening the mandate of state vocational rehabilitation agencies to facilitate successful school-to-work transitions for student populations. Among its many provisions, the measure provided an unparalleled opportunity to expand the scope of available experiences and training to help students with disabilities prepare for competitive integrated employment. A special issue of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, published by IOS Press, explores the state-of-the-art of pre-employment transition services (Pre-ETS) practices, and scholarship. ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – T cells are often called “assassins” or “killers” because they can orchestrate and carry out missions to hunt down bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells throughout the body. Mighty as they may be, recent research has shown that once T cells infiltrate the environment of a solid tumor, they lose the energy needed to combat the cancer. A research team led by Jessica Thaxton, PhD, MsCR, associate professor of cell biology and physiology and co-leader of the Cancer Cell Biology Program ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (March 15, 2024) – The public health toll from bereavement is well-documented in the medical literature, with bereaved persons at greater risk for many adverse outcomes, including mental health challenges, decreased quality of life, health care neglect, cancer, heart disease, suicide, and death. Now, in a paper published in The Lancet Public Health, researchers sound a clarion call for greater investment, at both the community and institutional level, in establishing support for grief-related suffering. The authors emphasized that increased mortality worldwide caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, suicide, drug overdose, homicide, ...

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named 14 new Damon Runyon Fellows, exceptional postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators. The prestigious, four-year Fellowship encourages the nation's most promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding ($300,000 total) to investigate cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention. The Foundation has also named six recipients of the Damon Runyon-Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists. This award recognizes Damon Runyon Fellows who have exceeded the Foundation’s ...

A new study led by a team of marine scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Southeast Fisheries Science Center, provides groundbreaking findings that offer insights on the migration and foraging patterns of leatherback sea turtles along the Northwest Atlantic shelf. Scientists have known that leatherbacks commonly swim from the South and Mid-Atlantic Bights during the warmer months to reach feeding areas near New England and Nova Scotia, Canada where food is plentiful. ...

The presentation summarised the preliminary findings from patients with known or suspected endometriosis who were imaged with a SPECT-CT camera and subsequently underwent planned laparoscopic surgery, a key-hole surgical procedure to establish the presence, absence and location of endometriotic lesions. The imaging findings were compared to the surgical and histology reports and indicate that 99mTc-maraciclatide holds potential as a non-invasive test for early-stage endometriosis. Specifically these preliminary findings demonstrate that 99mTc-maraciclatide has the potential to: Visualise superficial peritoneal endometriosis which is found ...

(Boston)—The MYCN oncoprotein (proteins related to the growth of cancer cells) plays a key role in starting, advancing and making it difficult to treat various human cancers. When MYCN is overactive, especially in high-risk neuroblastoma (childhood cancer often found in the adrenal glands), the tumors become less responsive to immunotherapy—a treatment that uses the body's immune system to fight cancer. Still, recognition of this problem has not led to any effective strategies to tackle this problem.   In a new study from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, researchers found that MYCN selectively increases ...

Philadelphia, March 15, 2024 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) identified a key metabolite in cells that helps direct immune responses and explains at a single cell level why immune cells that most efficiently recognize pathogens, vaccines, or diseased cells grow and divide faster than other cells. The findings also indicate that a better understanding of this metabolite and its role in immune response could improve the design of immunotherapies and create longer-lived responses against different types of cancer as well as enhance vaccine strategies. The findings were published ...

Weill Cornell Medicine investigators discovered that unique bacteria colonize the gut shortly after birth and make the neurotransmitter serotonin to educate gut immune cells. This prevents allergic reactions to food and the bacteria themselves during early development. The preclinical study, published in Science Immunology on Mar. 15, showed that bacteria abundant in the guts of newborns produce serotonin, which promotes the development of immune cells called T-regulatory cells or Tregs. These cells suppress inappropriate immune ...

People who identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual – particularly women – respond more positively to tobacco marketing, are more inclined to smoke cigarettes daily and may have a more difficult time quitting, according to two studies by a Rutgers Health researcher.   The studies, published in the Annals of LGBTQ Public and Population Health and Preventive Medicine Reports, investigated how some among the LGBTQ population respond to tobacco marketing, how they use tobacco and their history of quitting using two large national datasets, including the Population Assessment of Tobacco and ...

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) will use hemp to develop a commercially viable, durable, and low-embodied-carbon insulated siding product to address what the U.S. Green Building Council says is a “crucial need for building retrofits to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.”  The three-year, $1.5 million award given as part of the Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers and Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) funding opportunity from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) will support RPI faculty and industry partners in creating Hemp Retrofit Structural Insulated Panel (HeRS), a hemp-based insulated siding system that ...

Pears are big business in the Pacific Northwest US. But did you know that traditional pear breeding has remained largely unchanged for centuries? This slow process is difficult and costly, requiring the long-term commitment of labor, materials, and land-space resources. However, traditional pear breeding might get some help from genomics, thanks to a unique collaboration between students, scientists, and the pear industry fostered through an initiative called the American Campus Tree Genomes (ACTG).  ACTG was born from two professors’ ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Hunger can drive a motivational state that leads an animal to a successful pursuit of a goal — foraging for and finding food. In a highly novel study published in Current Biology, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, describe how two major neuronal subpopulations in a part of the brain’s thalamus called the paraventricular nucleus participate in the dynamic regulation of goal pursuits. This research provides insight into the mechanisms by which the brain tracks motivational ...

“Our approach identified genes that were previously implicated in aging, as well as new ones that may warrant further investigation.” BUFFALO, NY- March 15, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 5, entitled, “Genome-wide transcriptome profiling and development of age prediction models in the human brain.” Aging-related transcriptome changes in various regions of the healthy human brain have been explored in previous works, however, a study to develop prediction models for age based on the expression levels of specific ...

People with voice disorders, including those with pathological vocal cord conditions or who are recovering from laryngeal cancer surgeries, can often find it difficult or impossible to speak. That may soon change. A team of UCLA engineers has invented a soft, thin, stretchy device measuring just over 1 square inch that can be attached to the skin outside the throat to help people with dysfunctional vocal cords regain their voice function. Their advance is detailed this week in the journal Nature Communications. The new bioelectric system, developed ...

by Jade Boyd Special to Rice News HOUSTON – (March 15, 2024) – Rice University synthetic biologists have found a way to piggyback on the glucose monitoring technology used in automated insulin dosing systems and make it universally applicable for the monitoring and dosing of virtually any drug. In a recently published study in Nature Communications, researchers in the lab of Caroline Ajo-Franklin demonstrated the technique by modifying a blood-glucose sensor to detect the anticancer drug afimoxifene ...

Seven undergraduate students from The University of Texas at Arlington headed to Washington, D.C., for a hands-on program to live, learn and intern in the nation’s capital. Founded in 2001, The Archer Center is the Washington, D.C., campus of the University of Texas System. Students accepted to its Archer Fellowship Program move to the Capitol Hill area of Washington to live with other Archer Fellows and take courses taught by UT faculty and policy experts. The scholars also participate in a ...

NEW YORK, NY (March 15, 2024)--Compared to adults, newborns are highly susceptible to infections and these infections can cause serious health complications and even death. One factor known to affect a newborn’s response to infection is a condition called neonatal neutropenia, in which the infant fails to make enough neutrophils, the immune system’s first responders. What underlies this immune deficiency, which greatly increases a newborn’s susceptibility to infection, is largely unknown, leaving clinicians with little understanding of how to prevent or treat it. A new study of mice by Columbia University ...

Perfectly adapted microorganisms live in extreme environments from deep-sea trenches to mountaintops. Learning more about how these extremophiles survive in hostile conditions could inform scientists about life on Earth and potential life on other planets. In ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research, researchers detail a method for more accurate extremophile identification based on protein fragments instead of genetic material. The study identified two new hardy bacteria from high-altitude lakes in Chile — an ...