MADISON, Wis. — COVID-19 caused an alarming surge in premature births, but vaccines were key to returning the early birth rate to pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis of California birth records. “The effect of maternal COVID infection from the onset of the pandemic into 2023 is large, increasing the risk of preterm births over that time by 1.2 percentage points,” says Jenna Nobles, a University of Wisconsin–Madison sociology professor. “To move the needle on preterm birth that much is akin to a disastrous ...

All animals start out as a single-celled organism and then start growing. At some point, of course, they need to stop getting bigger, but the process by which this happens is poorly understood.  New research from Alexander Shingleton at the University of Illinois Chicago and colleagues identifies a potential trigger that makes fruit flies stop growing, which has implications for understanding human development. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  In humans, the body’s signal to stop growing happens around puberty, though it takes several more years before growth actually ceases. It is important to better ...

During the first two years of the pandemic, a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy increased the risk of preterm birth and NICU hospitalizations. However, by 2022, when COVID-19 vaccines were readily available in the United States, this effect disappeared – suggesting that vaccination against the coronavirus may have prevented thousands of preterm births, according to a new study led by Stanford sociologist Florencia Torche. The study’s findings, published Nov. 27 in the journal Proceedings of the National ...

Wireless devices consume more than just the hours users spend scrolling through social media, streaming podcasts and TV shows, and playing games. The networks used to connect these devices also consume a large amount of energy – up to a few thousand terawatt-hours annually worldwide, which is enough to power 70,000,000 homes for one year. UCF researcher Kenle Chen aims to enhance the energy efficiency of these systems with the support of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering ...

A cell nucleus is a busy place. Cellular proteins twist and pull DNA, folding the genome into intricate 3D structures that support functioning of its coding parts.  This choreography is essential for cell development, and the exact steps vary wildly between cell types. Establishing proper communication between genes and far-away control switches at the right time in the right cell is not a small feat. In fact, very few proteins have the right combination of features to organize the genome into the right structures. In ...

Health care organizations are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve patient care, but their translation into clinical settings has been inconsistent, in part because evaluating AI in health care remains challenging. In a new article, researchers propose a framework for using AI that includes practical guidance for applying values and that incorporates not just the tool’s properties but the systems surrounding its use. The article was written by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, The Hospital for Sick Children, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Columbia University, and the University of Toronto. It is published in Patterns. “Regulatory ...

1. A materials research team consisting of NIMS and Nagoya University has designed a novel two-step thermal aging schedule (i.e., non-isothermal aging or unconventional heat treatment) capable of fabricating nickel-aluminum (Ni-Al) alloys that are stronger at high temperatures than Ni-Al alloys fabricated using conventional thermal aging processes. This was achieved by using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to identify several dozen different thermal aging schedules potentially effective in increasing alloys’ high-temperature strength. The mechanisms ...

Auburn, AL – Richard Feynman famously stated, “Everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms.” This week, Nature Nanotechnology features a groundbreaking study that sheds new light on the evolution of the coronavirus and its variants of concern by analyzing the behavior of atoms in the proteins at the interface between the virus and humans. The paper, titled “Single-molecule force stability of the SARS-CoV-2–ACE2 interface in variants-of-concern,” is the result of an international collaborative ...

ORLANDO, Nov. 27, 2023 – Three research projects from the University of Central Florida have been selected for NASA Minority University Research and Education Project Partnership Annual Notification (MPLAN) awards. The grants, worth up to $50,000 each, are designed to connect and promote research collaborations between Minority Serving Institutions and NASA Mission Directorates. A total of 18 projects received Phase I funding across 15 universities. UCF received the most awards, with all three housed within the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Dean Michael Georgiopoulos ...

An innovative stem cell-based treatment for Type 1 diabetes can meaningfully regulate blood glucose levels and reduce dependence on daily insulin injections, according to new clinical trial results from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH). “This is a significant step toward a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. David Thompson, principal investigator at the Vancouver trial site, clinical professor of endocrinology at UBC and director of the Vancouver General Hospital Diabetes Centre. ...

A new form of wave devouring propulsion (WDP) could power ships and help to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the maritime industry.   Academics from Cranfield University have worked on the concept of using wave energy for propulsion, and designed an inventive method of achieving greater thrust from the power of the waves by harnessing a vessel’s submerged flapping foils in an innovative way.   Inspiration from whale fins   Taking inspiration from the power of a whale's fins, the team studied the structure and movement of the tail fin to unravel how it effectively uses wave energy for propulsion. Through simulations and experiments, they developed ...

Recommender systems are machine learning applications in online platforms that automate tasks historically done by people. In the news industry, recommender algorithms can assume the tasks of editors who select which news stories people see online, with the goal of increasing the number of clicks by users, but few studies have examined how the two compare. A new study examined how users of an online news outlet in Germany reacted to automated recommendations versus choices made by human editors. On average, the algorithm outperformed the person, but the person did better under certain conditions. The study’s authors suggest a combination of human curation and automated recommender ...

(Boston)—Breast density information aims to increase awareness of breast density and its risks and inform future breast screening decisions. Breast density notifications (BDN) advise women to discuss breast density with their clinicians, but prior research shows less than half of women in the general population have those conversations and little is known about the content of conversations that do occur.    A new study by researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School ...

Scientists have simulated conditions that allow hazy skies to form in water-rich exoplanets, a crucial step in determining how haziness muddles observations by ground and space telescopes. The research offers new tools to study the atmospheric chemistry of exoplanets and will help scientists model how water exoplanets form and evolve, findings that could help in the search for life beyond our solar system. “The big picture is whether there is life outside the solar system, but trying to answer that kind of question requires really detailed modeling of all different types, specifically in planets with lots of water,” said co-author ...

Scientists have made a surprising discovery that sheds new light on the role that oceanic deoxygenation (anoxia) played in one of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history. Their finding has implications for current day ecosystems – and serves as a warning that marine environments are likely more fragile than apparent. New research, published today in leading international journal Nature Geosciences, suggests that oceanic anoxia played an important role in ecosystem disruption and extinctions in marine environments during the Triassic–Jurassic mass extinction, ...

Antibodies—proteins that are produced by our immune system to protect us—are crucial for recognizing and getting rid of unwanted substances, or antigens, in our body. Although their role is universal, antibody structure varies in different animals. In a new study, researchers have analyzed the antibody Immunoglobulin M in rainbow trout to shed some light on why these proteins may have evolved over time. In humans, IgM consists of five repeating units that are held together by a joining chain, resulting in a star shape. Consequently, IgM can bind to multiple antigens at the ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Bitcoin mining is often perceived as environmentally damaging because it uses huge amounts of electricity to power its intensive computing needs, but a new study demonstrates how wind and solar projects can profit from bitcoin mining during the precommercial development phase — when a wind or solar farm is generating electricity, but has not yet been integrated into the grid. The findings suggest some developers could recoup millions of dollars to potentially invest in future renewable energy projects. The ...

Vampire bats may soon take up residence in the United States and bring with them an ancient pathogen. “What we found was that the distribution of vampire bats has moved northward across time due to past climate change, which has corresponded with an increase in rabies cases in many Latin American countries,” said Paige Van de Vuurst, a Ph.D. student in Virginia Tech’s Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program.  Van de Vuurst is the lead author of research recently published in the Ecography journal that predicts ...

To teach an AI agent a new task, like how to open a kitchen cabinet, researchers often use reinforcement learning — a trial-and-error process where the agent is rewarded for taking actions that get it closer to the goal. In many instances, a human expert must carefully design a reward function, which is an incentive mechanism that gives the agent motivation to explore. The human expert must iteratively update that reward function as the agent explores and tries different actions. This can be time-consuming, inefficient, ...

Dietary food intake has a major influence on health indicators, including Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure, serum cholesterol and glucose. Previous research has shown that decisions to purchase specific food items are primarily based on taste and cost. In the United States, only 12 percent and 10 percent of adults meet fruit and vegetable intake recommendations, respectively. Since affordability of food items is a limiting factor for meeting fruit and vegetable intake guidelines, researchers hypothesize that more affordable low energy-dense foods like fruits and vegetables, which are relatively more expensive ...

In recent years, cell and gene therapies have shown significant promise for treating cancer, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, heart disease, HIV/AIDS and other difficult-to-treat diseases. But the lack of effective ways to deliver biological treatments into the body has posed a major barrier for bringing these new therapies to the market — and, ultimately, to the patients who need them most.   Now, Northwestern University synthetic biologists have developed a flexible new platform that solves part of this daunting delivery problem. Mimicking natural ...

Kelly Schrum, Professor, Higher Education Program; Affiliated Faculty, History and Art History, and Nathan Sleeter, Research Assistant Professor, History and Art History, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), received $220,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project: "Unpacking the History of Higher Education in the United States."  This funding began in Oct. 2023 and will end in late Dec. 2024.  The history of higher education is central to understanding its present and future, especially for students in Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) programs who will lead colleges and universities for decades ...

SAN ANTONIO — November 27, 2023 —On November 17, 2023, the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission achieved an important milestone, passing its internal system integration review and clearing the mission to start integrating its four observatories. Southwest Research Institute leads PUNCH, a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission that will integrate understanding of the Sun’s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during total solar eclipses, with the “solar wind” that fills and defines the solar system. SwRI is also building the spacecraft and three of its five instruments. “This ...

Traditional sterility testing methods for the presence of bacteria and fungi in T-cell cultures are time-consuming, taking from seven up to 14 days, while this novel method takes only up to 24 hours Researchers combined advanced long-read nanopore sequencing techniques and machine learning to ensure accuracy and speed in detecting and identifying sample sterility status and microbial species present in T-cell cultures This breakthrough has the potential to transform sterility assurance in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, leading to better patient outcomes by accelerating the process of getting ...

·  AI tool could reduce disparities for patients who are diagnosed in community settings ·  Non-cancerous cells can play an important role in sustaining or inhibiting cancer growth  ·  One in eight U.S. women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis in her lifetime CHICAGO --- A new AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool may make it possible to spare breast cancer patients unnecessary chemotherapy treatments by using a more precise method of predicting their outcomes, reports ...