HONG KONG (8 December 2024)—A new vortex electric field with the potential to enhance future electronic, magnetic and optical devices has been observed by researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) and local partners. The research, published in Science, is highly valuable as it can upgrade the operation of many devices, including strengthening memory stability and computing speed. With further research, the discovery of the vortex electric field can even later impact the fields of quantum computing, spintronics, and nanotechnology. “Previously, generating a vortex electric field required expensive thin film deposition techniques and complex procedures. However, our ...

Though he doesn’t remember it, Branden Baptiste had his first sickle cell crisis at age 2. Through elementary school, he was in and out of the hospital with pain episodes, not knowing why. As he got older, he learned he had sickle cell disease: His red blood cells were forming sickle shapes and getting stuck in his blood stream, preventing oxygen from reaching his tissues. “From age 12, things skyrocketed,” says Branden, now 20. “I was in the hospital every other month with crises.” He estimates he missed 60 days of school every year. In sixth grade, Branden had to have his left hip replaced ...

SAN DIEGO – A simple dietary supplement may provide a new approach to boost CAR T cell function, according to a study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center. While the approach needs to be assessed in clinical trials, the early research, shared in a press briefing today at the 66th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition (Abstract 4), hints at a potentially cost-effective strategy to improve CAR T cell function and cancer-fighting abilities.    CAR T cell therapy is a ...

Today researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) reported results from the first ever clinical trial to show that a high fiber plant based dietary intervention may delay progression to multiple myeloma, a type of rare, incurable blood cancer affecting the bone marrow. The study enrolled 20 participants with a precancerous blood disorder and an elevated body mass index (BMI) at risk for developing multiple myeloma. They received 12 weeks of high fiber plant-based meals and 24 weeks of coaching. Two participants with progressing disease prior to study showed a significant improvement of their disease progression trajectory. Additionally, at one year ...

Just days before his fourth birthday, Santiago was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer in children.  He began chemotherapy the next day, and the outlook was promising – disease-free survival rates for B-ALL are among the highest for paediatric cancers, at 80 to 85 per cent. However, limited progress has been made over the last 15 years, and relapsed B-ALL remains a leading cause of cancer death among children.  Seeking to explore all options, Santiago’s parents enrolled him in a Children’s Oncology Group clinical trial led by scientists ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University showed that agricultural land preserved around river confluences can help mitigate floods. They make a case for Eco-DRR, an approach that uses existing environmental resources to improve resilience against flooding. Statistical analysis showed that municipalities with agricultural land in areas with high water storage potential suffered fewer floods, with stronger correlation when agricultural land was situated near river confluences. The team hope their findings inform effective land usage.   Climate change has brought ...

In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take either a bottom-up or top-down approach. But in disturbed systems, such as a post-fire forest ecosystem or a society in a pandemic, these unidirectional models can’t capture the interactions between the small-scale behaviors and the system-level properties. SFI External Professor John Harte (UC Berkeley) and his collaborators have worked to resolve this challenge by building a hybrid method that links bottom-up behaviors and top-down causation in a single theory.  Harte et ...

Experts have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to better understand the impact a gluten free diet has on people with coeliac disease, which could be the first step towards finding new ways of treating the condition. The MARCO study – MAgnetic Resonance Imaging in COliac disease – which is published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CGH), was led by experts from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, alongside colleagues at the Quadram Institute. Coeliac disease is a chronic condition affecting around one person in every 100 in the general population. When people with coeliac ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – BK polyomavirus, or BKPyV, is a major cause of kidney transplant failure. There are no effective drugs to treat BKPyV. Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reveals new aspects of BKPyV replication, offering possible drug targets to protect transplanted kidneys.   To better understand BKPyV replication and ways to prevent it, researchers in the UAB  Department of Microbiology have published a single-cell analysis of BKPyV infection in primary kidney cells. Their findings contradict a long-held understanding of the molecular events required for BKPyV ...

Irvine, Calif., Dec. 6, 2024 — Recent decades have seen a rapid surge in damages and disruptions caused by flooding. In a commentary article published today in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom – the latter also executives of U.K. flood risk intelligence firm Fathom – call on scientists to more accurately model these risks and caution against overly dramatized reporting of future risks in the news media.   In the paper, the researchers urge the climate science community to turn ...

Amid all the changes in Earth’s climate, sea ice in the stormy Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica was, for a long time, an odd exception. The maximum winter sea ice cover remained steady or even increased slightly from the late 1970s through 2015, despite rising global temperatures. That began to change in 2016. Several years of decline led to an all-time record low in 2023, more than five standard deviations below the average from the satellite record. The area of sea ice was 2.2 million square kilometers below the average from ...

Future farmers and leaders in agriculture need to understand and implement technologies that use artificial intelligence. A team of University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture faculty are working toward creating new curriculum to train the next generation of agriculture students. Led by Hao Gan, assistant professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, the team won a four-year grant for $741,102 from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The project, “Development of a Smart Agricultural Experiential Learning Program for Youth,” will create hands-on curriculum about using drones, ground robots, computer ...

Researchers have developed a novel device that couples magnetic fields and kirigami design principles to remotely control the movement of a flexible dimpled surface, allowing it to manipulate objects without actually grasping them – making it useful for lifting and moving items such as fragile objects, gels or liquids. The technology has potential for use in confined spaces, where robotic arms or similar tools aren’t an option. “We were trying to address two challenges here,” says Jie Yin, co-corresponding ...

Fukuoka, Japan – Researchers at Kyushu University have revealed how spatial distance between specific regions of DNA is linked to bursts of gene activity. Using advanced cell imaging techniques and computer modeling, the researchers showed that the folding and movement of DNA, as well as the accumulation of certain proteins, changes depending on whether a gene is active or inactive. The study, published on December 6 in Science Advances, sheds insight into the complicated world of gene expression and could lead to new therapeutic techniques for diseases caused by improper regulation of gene expression. Gene expression is a fundamental process that occurs within ...

Many recent studies assume that elderly people are at particular risk of dying from extreme heat as the planet warms. A new study of mortality in Mexico turns this assumption on its head: it shows that 75% of heat-related deaths are occurring among people under 35―a large percentage of them ages 18 to 35, or the very group that one might expect to be most resistant to heat. “It’s a surprise. These are physiologically the most robust people in the population,” said study coauthor Jeffrey Shrader of the Center for Environmental Economics and Policy, an affiliate of Columbia University’s Climate School. “I would love to know ...

-With images-   A pioneering international study led by Professor Peter Vickers of Durham University introduces a novel methodology for rapidly assessing scientific consensus on a global scale.   This innovative approach offers the ability to collect real-time, representative data on scientists' opinions across fields, geographical locations, and over time – a breakthrough that could reshape policy-making and public understanding in fields from health sciences to climate change.   The study, conducted in June 2023, brought together a global network ...

“Our results have no clear or direct application right now. It’s basic research that lays the foundation for future technologies in quantum information and quantum computers. There’s enormous potential for completely new discoveries in many different research fields,” says Guilherme B Xavier, researcher in quantum communication at Linköping University, Sweden. But to understand what the researchers have shown, we need to start at the beginning.  That light can be both particles and waves is one of the most illogical – but at the same time fundamental – characteristics ...

The ocean naturally absorbs a quarter to a third of man-made CO2 emissions, but this process also leads to the acidification of seawater. By increasing the alkalinity of seawater through the addition of certain minerals (e.g., carbonates and silicates), the ocean can chemically bind more CO2 without further acidification. However, there is still little research on the environmental effects of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE). Scientists from Prof. Ulf Riebesell´s group at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, as ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. [December 6, 2024] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®)—a non-profit alliance of leading cancer centers—hosted a Patient Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C., today. The annual event brings together leading experts to promote strategies and best practices for improving cancer care. This year’s summit focused on practice and policy solutions for sharing accurate, evidence-based health information with patients and caregivers. It featured a keynote address from W. Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, MMHC, Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), along with panel discussions that included Robin Vanderpool, DrPH, Chief of the ...

Globally, approximately 58 million people are chronically infected with HCV, resulting in 290,000 annual deaths due to complications such as liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. Although modern antiviral treatments achieve high cure rates, the global elimination of HCV remains a difficult goal due to inadequate early detection and limited treatment options. Indeed, HCV has been identified as one of the globally prioritized endemic pathogens for vaccine research and development in the World Health Organization's “Immunization Agenda 2030.” It ...

As in most years that we’ve followed news reporting about the myth that suicides peak during the end-of-year holidays, an analysis of the past year showed again that more newspaper accounts supported the false idea that the suicide rate increases during the holiday season than debunked it.   Over the past 25 years that we have been studying this phenomenon, in just over a third (nine years or 36%) have we found more debunking of the myth than support for it. Despite years of debunking by mental health researchers, journalists, and others, ...

In the journal “Science Translational Medicine”, scientists from DZNE and LMU Hospital report on new insights into the mechanisms of “Niemann-Pick type C” (NPC), a rare neurodegenerative disease associated with dementia that can manifest as early as childhood. Their findings, based on studies in mice, cell cultures and patients, emphasize that neuroinflammation, which is mediated by the brain’s immune system, plays a crucial role in NPC. In addition, their research points ...

Helping out your neighbor or minding your own business? A challenging choice with different benefits for each decision. Game theory provides guidance in making such choices—from a theoretical perspective. Novel findings by Jakub Svoboda and Krishnendu Chatterjee at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) reveal new network structures that enhance cooperation throughout a system. These insights have potential applications also in biology. The question of cooperation has puzzled scientists for a long time. Whether it is in the fields of biology, sociology, ...

Deciding where to build new solar or wind installations is often left up to individual developers or utilities, with limited overall coordination. But a new study shows that regional-level planning using fine-grained weather data, information about energy use, and energy system modeling can make a big difference in the design of such renewable power installations. This also leads to more efficient and economically viable operations. The findings show the benefits of coordinating the siting of solar farms, wind farms, and storage ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of 52,000 participants representing 264 million U.S. adults, population-level improvements in total cholesterol and triglyceride levels decelerated and adverse trends in glucose levels accelerated in more recent birth cohorts, which was partially mediated by concurrent increases in body mass index. Public health initiatives that target antecedent health behaviors are needed to improve cardiometabolic health across generations.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Xiaoning Huang, PhD, email jack.huang@northwestern.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media ...