The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: Global Commission proposes major overhaul of obesity diagnosis, going beyond BMI to define when obesity is a disease. Current medical approaches to diagnosing obesity rely on BMI which is not a reliable measure of health or illness at the individual level. This can result in misdiagnosis with negative consequences for people living with obesity and wider society. The Commission on Clinical Obesity recommends a new, nuanced approach where measures of body fat - for example, waist circumference or direct fat measurement - in addition to BMI are used to detect obesity, therefore reducing the risk of misclassification. Additionally, the ...

Federal reservoirs could help meet the country’s solar energy needs, according to a new study published in Solar Energy. For the study, Evan Rosenlieb and Marie Rivers, geospatial scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), as well as Aaron Levine, a senior legal and regulatory analyst at NREL, quantified for the first time exactly how much energy could be generated from floating solar panel projects installed on federally owned or regulated reservoirs. (Developers can find specific details for each reservoir on the website AquaPV.) And the potential is surprisingly ...

A new USC study reveals that the challenges that led to a national shortage of affordable housing and soaring home prices were set in motion long ago — and could have been foreseen. The researchers behind the study say that the problem will only worsen as more natural disasters — such as the devastating Los Angeles area wildfires and large hurricanes — flatten entire communities. Los Angeles County officials estimate that more than 10,000 homes and businesses have been lost so far to the fires that erupted across the region last week. “A ...

SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 14, 2025 – Scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and Trinity University are partnering with the San Antonio Food Bank for a four-year, $2.2 million study on eating disorders in older Hispanic women. A grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health is funding this transformative study, which aims to redefine how the intersection of binge eating, food insecurity and health disparities among ...

The University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science is set to revolutionize materials science with the development of a state-of-the-art electromagnetic levitation (EML) system, funded by a competitive Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grant. Designed to operate in extreme conditions, the system enables researchers to study ultra-high-temperature ceramics (UHTCs) in their solid and molten states — unlocking new possibilities for aerospace, defense and industrial applications. Rethinking High-Temperature Research Traditional methods of studying UHTCs are limited by the challenges of chemical contamination at extreme temperatures. The EML system’s ...

Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a gene-editing treatment for prion disease that extends lifespan by about 50 percent in a mouse model of the fatal neurodegenerative condition. The treatment, which uses base editing to make a single-letter change in DNA, reduced levels of the disease-causing prion protein in the brain by as much as 60 percent.  There is currently no cure for prion disease, and the new approach could be an important step towards treatments that prevent the disease or ...

LA JOLLA (January 14, 2025)—Like all cancers, bladder cancer develops when abnormal cells start to multiply out of control. But what if we could put a lid on their growth? Previous studies showed that a protein called PIN1 helps cancers initiate and progress, but its exact role in tumor development has remained unclear. Now, cancer biologists at the Salk Institute have discovered that PIN1 is a significant driver of bladder cancer and revealed that it works by triggering the synthesis of cholesterol—a membrane lipid essential for cancer cells to grow. After mapping out the molecular pathway between PIN1 and ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Researchers have identified a novel genetic risk factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection, providing new insights into the virus’ ability to invade human cells. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that spreads COVID-19. The study, led by immunologist Declan McCole at the University of California, Riverside, shows that a loss-of-function variant in the phosphatase gene PTPN2, commonly associated with autoimmune diseases, can increase expression of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2, making cells more susceptible to viral invasion. A loss-of-function ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 14, 2025 — Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and New York’s Columbia University have embedded transistors in a soft, conformable material to create a biocompatible sensor implant that monitors neurological functions through successive phases of a patient’s development. In a paper published recently in Nature Communications, the UC Irvine scientists describe their construction of complementary, internal, ion-gated, organic electrochemical transistors that are more amenable ...

The microscopic soybean cyst nematode (SCN) may be small, but it has a massive impact. This pest latches onto soybean roots, feeding on their nutrients and leaving a trail of destruction that costs farmers billions in yield losses each year. Unfortunately, current methods to combat SCN are faltering as the pest grows resistant to traditional controls. But new research is now offering a glimmer of hope. A collaborative team of scientists from BASF Agricultural Solutions and the Advanced Bioimaging Laboratory at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center are working on a potential solution: ...

With the holidays behind us, many Americans are seeing the numbers on the scale go up a pound or two. In fact, data shows that many American midlife and older adults gain 1 to 1.5 pounds over the November through January holiday period. Though not harmful on its own, even a small amount of holiday weight gain in the form of fat can negatively affect health. People often fail to lose the extra weight, which leads to significant cumulative weight gain over the years and contributes to health concerns.   Based on new research, we now know that college students gain the same amount of weight as older ...

A hidden world teeming with life lies below beach sands. New Stanford-led research sheds light on how microbial communities in coastal groundwater respond to infiltrating seawater. The study, published Dec. 22 in Environmental Microbiology, reveals the diversity of microbial life inhabiting these critical ecosystems and what might happen if they are inundated by rising seas. “Beaches can act as a filter between land and sea, processing groundwater and associated chemicals before they reach the ocean,” said study co-first author Jessica Bullington, a Ph.D. student in Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “Understanding ...

HOUSTON – (Jan. 14, 2025) – To describe how matter works at infinitesimal scales, researchers designate collective behaviors with single concepts ⎯ like calling a group of birds flying in sync a “flock” or “murmuration.” Known as quasiparticles, the phenomena these concepts refer to could be the key to next-generation technologies. In a recent study published in Science Advances, a team of researchers led by Shengxi Huang, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and materials science and nanoengineering at Rice, describe how one such type of quasiparticle ⎯ polarons ⎯ behaves in tellurene, a nanomaterial first synthesized ...

Two new compounds may be able to treat retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited eye diseases that cause blindness. The compounds, described in a study published January 14th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Beata Jastrzebska from Case Western Reserve University, US, and colleagues, were identified using a virtual screening approach. In retinitis pigmentosa, the retina protein rhodopsin is often misfolded due to genetic mutations, causing retinal cells to die off and leading to progressive blindness. Small molecules to correct rhodopsin folding are urgently needed to treat the estimated 100,000 ...

Following a 2005 policy, episiotomy rates have reduced in France without an overall increase in anal sphincter injuries during labor, with more research needed to confirm the safest rate of episiotomies and the risks to specific subgroups   In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004501 Article title: Episiotomies and obstetric anal sphincter injuries following a restrictive episiotomy policy in France: An analysis of the 2010, 2016, and 2021 National Perinatal Surveys Author countries: France, Switzerland Funding: ...

Researchers find that rats create neurological maps of places to avoid after experiencing a threat and think about these locations when exhibiting worry-related behaviors. These findings—which A. David Redish of the University of Minnesota, US, and colleagues presented in the open-access journal PLOS Biology on January 14th—may provide insight into the neuroscience of common psychological conditions like anxiety. There are many theories as to why people experience anxiety. One is that anxiety is associated with a psychological phenomenon called “approach-avoidance conflict,” where ...

ROCKVILLE, MD—January 14, 2025—The American Association for Anatomy (AAA) is thrilled to announce the recipients of their 2025 Spring Awards. Each awardee will be formally recognized at the Anatomy Connected 2025 Closing Awards Ceremony on March 31, in Portland, Oregon. The Spring Awards include the three highest distinctions awarded by AAA: the Henry Gray Scientific Award, the A.J. Ladman Exemplary Service Award, and the Henry Gray Distinguished Educator Award. The winners of these awards, along with the others on this list, are gathered through a nomination process conducted by their peers ...

Positive feedback is helpful for learning, but usually, our greatest lessons actually come from failure— and a new project at the University of Pittsburgh aims to uncover the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Helen Schwerdt, assistant professor of bioengineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, received a five-year, $2.5 million R01 award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study dopamine’s role in learning. Schwerdt’s team develops novel multimodal neural interfaces ...

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has made incredible advances in the past few years, especially for widely spoken languages such as English. Prior to 2020, it was typically assumed that human abilities for speech recognition far exceeded automatic systems, yet some current systems have started to match human performance. The goal in developing ASR systems has always been to lower the error rate, regardless of how people perform in the same environment. After all, not even people will recognize speech with 100% accuracy in a noisy environment. In a new study, UZH computational linguistics specialist Eleanor Chodroff and a fellow researcher from Cambridge ...

Water droplets under freezing conditions do not spontaneously detach from surfaces as they do at room temperature due to stronger droplet-surface interaction and lack of an energy transformation pathway. Since accumulated droplets or ice have to be removed manually or with mechanical equipment, which is costly and inefficient, preventing droplet accretion on surfaces is both scientifically intriguing and practically important. Researchers at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have invented a ground-breaking self-powered mechanism of freezing droplet ejection that allows droplets to ...

More than three-quarters of older adults with dementia may be unaware of their diagnosis, a University of Michigan study finds. That number is even higher — up to 85% — among Mexican Americans, who make up the largest share of the U.S. Hispanic and Latino population. Fewer than 7% of all study participants, who live in Nueces County, Texas and were classified as having probable dementia based on a cognitive assessment, did not have a primary care provider. The results are published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. “Dementia diagnosis unawareness is a public health issue that must be addressed,” ...

A new study has lifted the lid on five species of root-lesion nematodes living in maize crops across New Zealand - and suggested the existence of a hitherto-unsuspected cryptic species. The article, ‘Molecular characterization of root-lesion nematode, (Pratylenchus spp.) and their prevalence in New Zealand maize fields’, is published in Letters in Applied Microbiology, an Applied Microbiology International publication. Identifying these nematodes and understanding their distribution will enable targeted pest management strategies, helping to protect crop yields and maintain agricultural ...

Pine cones as a model: Researchers at the universities of Stuttgart and Freiburg have developed a new, energy-autonomous facade system that adapts passively to the weather. The journal Nature Communications has published the research results. "Most attempts at weather responsiveness in architectural facades rely heavily on elaborate technical devices. Our research explores how we can harness the responsiveness of the material itself through advanced computational design and additive manufacturing," says Professor Achim Menges, head of the Institute for Computational Design and Construction ...

Researchers uncover what drives aggressive bone cancer Large-scale analysis of patient cohorts reveals a novel mechanism driving osteosarcoma, an aggressive paediatric bone cancer. The researchers show that this mechanism occurs in approximately 50% of high-grade osteosarcoma cases. This research also provides insights to help predict osteosarcoma patient outcomes which can help improve the management of this disease. Osteosarcoma is a type of aggressive bone cancer that most commonly affects children and young adults between the ages of 10 and 20, during times ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2025 – Plant-based dairy products are a great alternative for people who avoid animal products, but manufacturers have a hard time replicating the creamy, cheesy qualities that make dairy so indulgent. Scientists from the University of Guelph in Ontario and Canadian Light Source Inc. in Saskatchewan are working to produce plant-based cheese with all the characteristics of real cheese, but with better health benefits. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers studied multiple types of plant-based proteins and how they interact with ...