The magnitude 7.9 Bonin Islands earthquake sequence, which ruptured deep within the earth near the base of the upper mantle, did not include an aftershock that extended to record depths into the lower mantle, according to a study in The Seismic Record. When Hao Zhang of the University of Southern California and colleagues re-examined the aftershock sequence of the May 2015 earthquake, they did not find evidence for a 751-kilometer-deep aftershock as reported by previous researchers. This aftershock has been called the deepest earthquake ever recorded. Instead, their study found a distribution of aftershocks that is compatible with a 12-kilometer sliver of a mantle mineral called olivine ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – Researchers from Michigan State University’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies revealed that sleep patterns may vary across different racial and ethnic groups — notably for non-white and multiracial children. Yijie Wang is an associate professor of human development and family studies in the College of Social Science, and her research team published a ...

MINNEAPOLIS — Pregnant people with multiple sclerosis (MS) have a higher chance of experiencing mental illness both during their pregnancy and in the first years after they give birth than those without MS, according to a study published in the January 22, 2025 online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “Previous studies have shown that women with MS are more likely to have depression, anxiety disorders and bipolar disorder compared to women without MS,” said study author Ruth Ann Marrie, MD, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and ...

Toronto, ON, January 22, 2025 – People with multiple sclerosis (MS) face a significantly higher risk of perinatal mental illness compared to those with other chronic conditions, according to a new study analyzing over 890,000 births in Ontario.   The research, published online in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, sheds light on the mental health challenges faced by people with MS during pregnancy and the first year after childbirth. Using population-based health ...

Two West Virginia University researchers have designed a curriculum to engage liberal arts faculty in discussions on the social, ethical and technical aspects of artificial intelligence and its role in classrooms. Through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Erin Brock Carlson, assistant professor of English, and Scott Davidson, professor of philosophy, both at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, have designed an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional program to facilitate conversations among faculty about the ...

Investigators from Mass General Brigham have found that a method originally designed for cancer detection can also identify and monitor even tiny amounts of SARS-CoV-2 intact viral particles in blood and other fluids from patients with acute COVID-19 infections, creating the potential for guiding future treatment of patients. The research is published in Science Advances.   “During the early days of the pandemic, we wanted to see if our approach for isolating small cancer vesicles could be adapted to isolate SARS-CoV-2 virus from biofluids like blood, stool, and ...

MADISON — University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers have developed a promising technique for treating osteoarthritis using therapeutic blood clots activated by messenger RNA.  Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting roughly 33 million adults in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It occurs when cartilage in key joints like the knees and hips deteriorates, causing pain and stiffness and impeding mobility. In a paper in the journal Bioactive Materials ...

Three NASA sounding rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range as early as Tuesday to learn more about three types of aurora — black, flickering and fast-pulsating. The launch window is Jan. 21 through Feb. 5. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located at Mile 30 Steese Highway, and operates it under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, part of the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The launches will be the first of the season. As of April 2024, Poker Flat had launched 350 major sounding rockets and ...

The Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) has named Jared M. Kutzin, DNP, MS, MPH, RN, the Senior Director of the Simulation Teaching and Research (STAR) Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital, as its new President. He was elected this month during the annual International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) in Orlando, Florida. He is the first Mount Sinai faculty member to hold this position and will serve as the 20th President of SSH. Health care simulation is the practice of using immersive and innovative technology in ...

Study Title: CD45-PET is a robust, non-invasive tool for imaging inflammation Publication: Nature, January 22, 2025 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute authors: Ali Salehi Farid, PharmD, Jennifer E. Rowley, Harris H. Allen, Isabella G. Kruger, Soheil Tavakolpour, Kyle Neeley, Min Cong, PhD, Haneyeh Shahbazian, MD, Niki Dorafshani, Achraf Berrada, MS, Mohammad Rashidian, PhD Summary: Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a breakthrough method to detect inflammation in the body using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. This innovative probe targets CD45, a marker abundantly expressed on all immune cells but absent from other cell types. ...

Certain proteins found in the human brain have long been known to be critical to controlling how brain cells communicate with each other. So-called GABAA receptors are proteins that control the flow of ions into and out of cells. As they play such a vital role in how neurons slow down or stop firing, they have become the targets of many drugs for conditions such as epilepsy, anxiety, depression and insomnia. Yet due to technical limitations and the delicate nature of studying human brain tissue, scientists have lacked a complete picture of how GABAA receptors, and their 19 subunits, ...

People whose parents divorced during their childhood may be at a greater risk of stroke later in life, according to a new study published January 22, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Esme Fuller-Thomson of University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues.  Each year, approximately 795,000 individuals in the U.S. have a stroke. Previous work has established many sociodemographic risk factors for stroke, as well as connections between adverse childhood events and stroke. In the new study, researchers looked specifically at the ...

Data on almost 57,000 people from 65 countries suggests that the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)—a widely used research tool—generally holds up well when applied across diverse groups of people, underscoring its potential value in research and policymaking. Viren Swami of Anglia Ruskin University, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 22, 2025. Life satisfaction is linked to a broad range of life areas, such as physical health, employment, and mortality. The SWLS is a questionnaire that measures an individual’s life ...

TORONTO, ON – A recent study by researchers from the University of Toronto, Tyndale University and the University of Texas at Arlington found that older adults are at greater risk of having a stroke if they experienced their parents divorcing during childhood.   Among Americans aged 65 and older, one in nine whose parents had divorced reported that they had been diagnosed with a stroke, compared to one in 15 of those whose parents had not divorced during their childhood. “Our study indicates that ...

A new study suggests that countries with stronger commitments to protect the natural environment—regardless of national oil dependence or other economic interests—are more likely to see the establishment of counter climate change groups that aim to obstruct climate change action. Jared Furuta and Patricia Bromley of Stanford University, U.S., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 22, 2025. Prior research has highlighted how the fossil fuel industry and conservative think tanks and philanthropists have stoked climate change skepticism in the U.S. in order to serve their economic ...

Some coral "walk" towards blue or white light, using rolling, sliding or pulsing movements to migrate, per experiments with free-living mushroom coral Cycloseris cyclolites     Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0315623 Article title: Walking coral: Complex phototactic mobility in the free-living coral Cycloseris cyclolites Author countries: Australia, Saudi Arabia Funding: The authors declare the research was funded by an Australian Research ...

A research group led by Kazunobu Sawamoto, a professor at Nagoya City University and National Institute for Physiological Sciences, and Koya Kawase, a pediatric doctor at Nagoya City University Hospital, has elucidated the significance of birth in the maintenance of neural stem cells (NSCs).  Birth is one of the most significant life events for animals. The transition from the intrauterine to the extrauterine environment causes various metabolic changes in individuals. Despite its significance, the role of birth in the developmental process remains incompletely understood. In the adult mammalian brain, NSCs are retained in the ...

An understanding of the relationship between severe weather and power outages in our changing climate will be critical for hazard response plans, according to a study published January 22, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Vivian Do of Columbia University, New York and colleagues. Throughout the United States, large-scale power outages commonly occur alongside severe weather events. These combined events can be associated with major economic costs and health risks, as loss of power can disrupt medical equipment, heating or air conditioning, and other important systems. As severe weather ...

Osaka, Japan – Imaging live cells with fluorescent proteins has long been a crucial technique for understanding cellular behavior. While bioluminescent proteins offer several advantages over fluorescent proteins, the limited availability of color variants has made it difficult to observe multiple targets simultaneously. Now, researchers from SANKEN (The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research) at Osaka University have developed a groundbreaking method to expand the color palette of bioluminescent protein to 20 distinct colors, enabling advanced simultaneous multi-color imaging. Cells are the fundamental building blocks of life. Understanding how they function is essential ...

When it comes time to migrate, QUT research has found how a free-living coral ignores the classic advice and goes straight towards the light. The research – led by Dr Brett Lewis from the QUT School of Atmospheric and Earth Sciences and Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, and published in PLOS One – investigated how the free-living mushroom coral Cycloseris cyclolites moves, navigates and responds to light in its natural environments. “Not all corals are attached to the substrate; some are solitary and free-living, allowing them to migrate into preferred habitats,” ...

An understanding of the relationship between severe weather and power outages in our changing climate will be critical for hazard response plans, according to a study led by a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The study is published in the open-access journal PLOS Climate. Throughout the U.S., large-scale power outages commonly occur alongside severe weather events. These combined events can be associated with major economic costs and health risks, as loss of power can disrupt medical equipment, heating or air conditioning, and other important systems. As severe weather events increase in severity and frequency ...

Engineering and medical researchers at Penn have developed a groundbreaking framework that can determine the best and most computationally optimized distribution strategy for COVID-19 vaccinations in any given community. Published in PLOS One, this study addresses one of the most critical challenges in pandemic response — how to prioritize vaccination efforts in communities with individuals of different risk levels when supplies are scarce and the stakes are high. The research team, comprised of Saswati Sarkar, Professor ...

TUCSON, Arizona — A new study led by University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health researchers in collaboration with fire service partners and other researchers around the country through the Fire Fighter Cancer Cohort Study showed that post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety are associated with lower levels of anti-Müllerian hormone, a marker of ovarian reserve, among women firefighters. The ovarian reserve is the number of healthy eggs in a woman’s ovaries that ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (1/22/2025) — A research team from the University of Minnesota Medical School recently received a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as a treatment for youth with Tourette syndrome and other tic disorders.  These conditions affect one in every 50 children and are characterized by involuntary movements or sounds called “tics.” Tics are often painful, distressing and interfere with daily life activities. In some cases, tics can be quite disabling. The research team recently completed the first phase of this clinical trial ...

Enzymes are crucial to life. They are nature’s little catalysts. In the gut, they help us digest food. They can enhance perfumes or get laundry cleaner with less energy. Enzymes also make potent drugs to treat disease. Scientists naturally are eager to create new enzymes. They imagine them doing everything from drawing greenhouse gases out of the skies to degrading harmful toxins in the environment.  That age-old quest for new enzymes just got a whole lot easier. A team of bioengineers and synthetic biologists has developed a computational workflow that can design thousands of new enzymes, predict how they will behave in the real world, and test their performance ...