Research Brief Background: Home Health Focus is a new publicly available data set representing home health use by Medicare beneficiaries at home health agency, county, and state levels from 2016 to 2019. The dataset was created to allow users to examine local and national trends without the costs or time-consuming process of entering into a data use agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). What the Dataset Includes: The dataset includes basic demographics and indicators of patient function and health status. From 2016 to 2019, home health use rose from 6,853,965 stays among 5,023,681 patients to 7,035,893 stays among 5,088,300 beneficiaries. ...

Original Research Background: This study tested a process to qualify bilingual staff as medical interpreters at a large community health center. Bilingual employees (137 mostly heritage Spanish speaking individuals) completed a survey, self-rated their Spanish ability by taking a formal general Spanish language test and a formal medical interpretation test. Participants then completed a 40-hour online course and then repeated the medical interpretation test. 87 employees completed all steps.   What This Study Found: Heritage Spanish ...

Original Research  Background: In this study, researchers examined whether people who follow higher-GI or higher-GL diets have different risks of developing lung cancer. They used data from 101,732 adults in the U.S. National Cancer Institute's Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial cohort who filled out a detailed diet questionnaire when they joined the study (1993–2001). These adults were followed for about 12 years to see who developed lung cancer. The researchers then compared people with the highest GI and GL to those with the lowest, accounting for ...

A controlled feeding study out of South Dakota State University shows that older adults who ate fewer ultra-processed foods naturally consumed fewer calories, lost weight and abdominal fat, and showed improvements in insulin, nutrient-sensing hormones, and inflammation. “Counting nutrients is not enough,” Moul Dey, professor of health and nutritional sciences, said. “The degree of processing changes how the body handles those same nutrients. Diet quality depends not only on nutrients but also on the ingredients and the level of processing, considered together.” For decades, the Dietary ...

Baltimore, MD — Researchers from the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have discovered how a specific type of immune cell may contribute to the persistence of HIV infections.  The finding offers new insight into why the virus remains difficult to cure even with effective antiretroviral therapy.  The study was published earlier this month in Science Translational Medicine. It was led by Guangming Li, PhD, and Lishan Su, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology at UMSOM and Director of the Division of Virology, Pathogenesis and Cancer, and Interim Director of the Division ...

Protected areas are often seen as refuges for plants and animals – yet they are also places where people live, work and relax. A new study led by the University of Göttingen in Germany, in collaboration with the Universities of Kassel in Germany, Jyväskylä in Finland, and Stockholm in Sweden, shows how deeply people are connected to these landscapes. The research team analyzed personal stories from residents, land managers, and visitors in protected areas of the district of Göttingen. Their findings reveal that protected areas foster local identity, support learning about nature, and provide spaces for recreation, working ...

Brittany Rodriguez and Akash Phadatare of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Science Division (MSD) have been named to SME’s prestigious 30 Under 30 program for 2025. For the past decade, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers has recognized young visionaries in the field — talented individuals with a passion for innovation across manufacturing, research and engineering disciplines. “I am immensely proud of Brittany Rodriguez and Akash Phadatare for their innovative contributions ...

November 20, 2025-- Younger workers in governmental public health place significantly higher value on nontraditional benefits than their older counterparts, according to a new study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Flexible scheduling and remote-work policies were among the top motivators for younger employees choosing and remaining in public service. The findings are published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. “Public health workers age 35 or younger consistently show lower retention rates ...

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 24, 2025 — Around the world, doctors, nurses and pharmacists are turning to evidence-based integrative approaches such as acupuncture, yoga, exercise, massage and nutrition counseling to help people with cancer manage the harsh side effects of treatment. New research led by the University of California, Irvine shows just how widespread that shift has become and how much work remains to make these therapies accessible to all. Published this month in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, the study surveyed more than 300 oncology professionals from the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer and the Society for Integrative ...

New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History reveals that the majority of dogs living today have low but detectable levels of post-domestication wolf ancestry that has likely shaped characteristics including body size, sense of smell, and personality traits. The study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that this newly uncovered gene flow may help give unique advantages to dogs’ survival in diverse human environments. Among their findings: post-domestication wolf ancestry exists in a wide range of dog breeds, ...

Scientists have found wolf remains, thousands of years old, on a small, isolated island in the Baltic Sea – a place where the animals could only have been brought by humans. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, Stockholm University, the University of Aberdeen and the University of East Anglia, suggest that grey wolves may have been managed or controlled by prehistoric societies. The discovery of the 3,000–5,000-year-old wolf remains was made in the Stora Förvar cave on the Swedish island of Stora Karlsö, a site known for its intensive use by seal hunters and fishers during the ...

Tropical cyclones can unleash extensive devastation, as recent storms that swept over Jamaica and the Philippines made unmistakably clear. Accurate weather forecasts that buy more time to prepare are crucial for saving lives and are rooted in a deeper understanding of climate systems. Driving this forward, researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and others have successfully identified a previously unknown cyclic climate pattern by historical reanalysis of datasets and satellite observations. The findings are published in PNAS. Jiawei Bao still remembers coming home from middle school to ...

PHILADELPHIA – Correcting misinformation after it has gone viral is a common way of informing the public that what they’ve encountered may be inaccurate, lack context, be unproven, or be demonstrably false. But repeating a misconception when refuting it carries the risk of spreading it to a larger audience, especially because the people who read a fact-checking report may not be the same ones who were originally exposed to the worrisome information. To overcome these challenges, researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University ...

There's no one-size-fits-all solution to adapting and building resilience to climate change, but a new study led by the University of Michigan offers three generalized pathways to help climate knowledge achieve its maximum impact. The researchers analyzed available literature and built on their own experiences to distill these separate but complementary pathways for creating new thinking that is not only actionable, but scalable. Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ...

It has only recently become known that two parallel systems of blood formation exist in the body, originating from different precursor cells. Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have developed a method to examine both systems separately in mice for the first time. Their surprising finding: the majority of immune cells do not originate from classic blood stem cells in the bone marrow, but from precursor cells that are independent of blood stem cells and are already present in the ...

A study led by researchers at the University of Cambridge provides a window into canine emotions, revealing why some golden retrievers are more fearful, energetic or aggressive than others. The research, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to show that specific genes linked to canine behaviour are also associated with traits like anxiety, depression, and intelligence in people. The team analysed the genetic code of 1,300 golden retrievers and compared it with each dog’s behavioural traits – assessed through a detailed owner questionnaire. This revealed genes underlying traits including trainability, ...

Cancer-fighting antibody drugs are designed to penetrate tumor cells and release a lethal payload deep within, but too often they don’t make it that far. A new study shows how this Trojan Horse strategy works better by exploiting calcium differences outside and inside cells.  A research team led by Sophia Hober, professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, reported the development of a calcium activated delivery system they say could enable more precise treatment, with lower doses and less collateral damage to healthy tissue. In collaboration with Stanford University and Umeå University, ...

Researchers at the LSU LCMC Health Cancer Center have published groundbreaking findings in NPJ Breast Cancer that sheds new light on triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded study, led by Dr. Lucio Miele, Director of the LSU LCMC Health Cancer Center, in collaboration with colleagues at LSU Health New Orleans, City of Hope Cancer Center (Duarte, CA), and the University of California, San Diego, examined tumors from more than 250 Black and White women across ...

A study led by University of Cincinnati Cancer Center researchers sheds new light on how pancreatic cancer cells resist treatment and points to potential new combination therapies to make treatments more effective. The research, led by corresponding author Andrew Waters, PhD, and co-first authors Haley Todd, Grace Goodheart and Szu-Aun Long, MD, was recently published in Cancer Research, a journal for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).   The research focuses on a gene called KRAS, the most frequently mutated oncogene in human cancer, which is mutated ...

As our society becomes more digital and interconnected, the systems that keep it running face growing vulnerability to cyber threats. Bahaa Eltahawy’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa, Finland, shows that safeguarding these networks requires a holistic approach. From power grids and transport to healthcare systems, the functioning of modern society relies on interconnected networks. When these systems fail, the consequences ripple quickly across sectors. In his doctoral dissertation in Computer Science, Bahaa Eltahawy argues that ensuring their security is not just a technical challenge but a ...

In a new JNeurosci paper, Tian-Ming Gao and colleagues, from Southern Medical University, explored how adenosine triphosphate (ATP) signaling relates to depression and anxiety using male mice. ATP is a molecule that not only provides energy but also supports communication between neurons. The researchers focused on ATP signaling in a brain region implicated in depression called the hippocampus.  Male mice that were more likely to acquire depressive- and anxiety-like symptoms following long-term stress had less ATP levels and ...

When people use a psychedelic called dimethyltryptamine (DMT), they experience a temporary loss of their sense of self. DMT interacts with a frequency of brain activity associated with self-referential processes (alpha waves), but it’s unclear how this activity relates to self-awareness. Christopher Timmerman, at University College London, and Marco Aqil, currently at the University of Miami, are among researchers who used DMT as a tool to explore the relationship between alpha waves and self-awareness.   As reported in their JNeurosci paper, the researchers discovered ...

Human emotional interaction relies heavily on CT afferents—unmyelinated nerves in hairy skin that convert gentle tactile stimuli into affective states. For robots to engage in similar empathetic communication, existing tactile sensing technologies fall short: most rely on segregated "sensation-transmission-processing" modules, which cause latency accumulation and high energy consumption due to repeated analog-to-digital conversion. "Current neuromorphic devices for touch either lack low-threshold sensitivity or separate ...

**EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL NOV. 24 AT 12 NOON** Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have used a “zap-and-freeze” technology to watch hard-to-see brain cell communications in living brain tissue from mice and humans. Findings from the new experiments, supported by the National Institutes of Health and published Nov. 24 in Neuron, could potentially help scientists find the root causes of nonheritable forms of Parkinson’s disease, the researchers say. Sporadic cases of Parkinson’s disease account for most ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Using a prebiotic to influence bacterial activity in the gut after a traumatic brain injury may help reduce impulsive behavior, one of the common symptoms to follow a moderate blow to the head, a new study in rats suggests. Following up on previous work showing a connection between negative changes to gut bacteria after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and poor decision making, researchers at The Ohio State University are now exploring whether the gut problems may actually cause some long-term symptoms. They found that adding the prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS) to rat diets before and after ...