Burlington, Vt.— A team of UVM scientists led by Mark Nelson, Ph.D., from the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, has uncovered a novel mechanism that reshapes our understanding of how blood flow is regulated in the brain. The study, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), introduces Electro-Calcium (E-Ca) Coupling, a process that integrates electrical and calcium signaling in brain capillaries to ensure precise blood flow delivery to active neurons. In the human body, blood is delivered into the brain from surface arteries ...

Dubbed “Conan the Bacterium” for its extraordinary ability to tolerate the harshest of conditions, Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand radiation doses thousands of times higher than what would kill a human — and every other organism for that matter. The secret behind this impressive resistance is the presence of a collection of simple metabolites, which combine with manganese to form a powerful antioxidant. Now, chemists at Northwestern University and the Uniformed Services University (USU) have discovered how this antioxidant works. In ...

A new USC Stem Cell study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has identified key gene regulators that enable some deafened animals—including fish and lizards—to naturally regenerate their hearing. The findings could guide future efforts to stimulate the regeneration of sensory hearing cells in patients with hearing loss and balance disorders. Led by first author Tuo Shi and co-corresponding authors Ksenia Gnedeva and Gage Crump at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the study focuses on two cell types in the inner ear: the sensory cells that detect sound, and the supporting cells that create an environment where ...

CLEVELAND (Dec. 9)—A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian continent. Three Israeli researchers led the team that published its results today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And researchers from the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Dental Medicine helped unearth the cave’s secrets over more than a decade of excavation. Manot Cave was used for thousands of years as a living space for both Neanderthals ...

A collaborative study has uncovered evidence of rice beer dating back approximately 10,000 years at the Shangshan site in Zhejiang Province, China, providing new insights into the origins of alcoholic beverage brewing in East Asia. This discovery highlights the connection between rice fermentation at Shangshan and the region’s cultural and environmental context as well as the broader development of early rice agriculture and social structures. The study was jointly conducted by researchers from Stanford University, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Zhejiang Provincial Institute ...

December 9, 2024 (Washington, DC, United States of America and Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) and the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD) were recently awarded 200,000 Swiss Francs from the Jacobs Foundation to support initiatives related to mentoring early career scholars from Ghana and Colombia in the areas of grant writing, research methodology, peer reviewing, and scholarly publishing. The grants are part of a larger collaborative project called the ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can watch and understand moving images with the subtlety of a human brain. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have made this a reality by creating MovieNet: an innovative AI that processes videos much like how our brains interpret real-life scenes as they unfold over time. This brain-inspired AI model, detailed in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on November 19, 2024, can perceive moving scenes by simulating how neurons—or brain cells—make real-time sense of the world. Conventional ...

More than half of laws and policies on healthcare workers’ rights align with international standards, according to a study published December 9, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS Global Public Health by Matthew Kavanagh from Georgetown University, U.S., James Campbell from the World Health Organization, Switzerland, and colleagues. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, healthcare workers were at the forefront to stem the tide, often putting their own health at risk. Inadequate infection control measures and insufficient access to personal protective ...

University of Houston psychology researcher Jason Griffin, who has pioneered new ways of measuring eye movements to understand autism spectrum disorder, is reporting that children with autism focus on faces differently than other children, especially in the early stages of visual processing. His findings may lead to improvement in face processing for those with the neurodevelopmental condition.   For most people, looking eye-to-eye with someone while talking seems an important yet innocuous social convention – one barely thought of during polite conversation. But for those with autism, characterized ...

The majority of the known asteroids orbit within the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter at an average distance from Earth of about 250 millions kilometers. Since the discovery of the first asteroid in 1801, nearly 750.000 of them have already been numbered, mainly in the last decade thanks to the many optical surveys searching the sky every clear nights. Most of these asteroids are larger than 1 kilometer, the largest one, Vesta, at about 530 km in diameter, while many millions of smaller ones are expected. While these look huge numbers, the total mass of all the asteroids combined is less than that of Earth's Moon.   Sometimes, these asteroids ...

  SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 9, 2024 – Mays Cancer Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), in partnership with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), is hosting the 47th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center on Dec. 10-13. Owned and initiated by Mays Cancer Center, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is the world’s largest breast cancer research conference. More than 11,000 clinicians, researchers, and patient ...

“This study reveals the potential for prognostic features in predicting hepatic decompensation in patients with PSC.” BUFFALO, NY – December 9, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget’s Volume 15 on November 22, 2024, entitled “Computed tomography-based radiomics and body composition model for predicting hepatic decompensation.”  Mayo Clinic researchers Yashbir Singh, John E. Eaton, Sudhakar K. Venkatesh, and Bradley J. Erickson have developed an innovative AI tool to predict hepatic decompensation in individuals with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). PSC is a chronic disease that damages ...

About The Study: This study found that adults ages 50 to 80 commonly reported loneliness and social isolation. While the pandemic disrupted social connections, rates of loneliness and isolation were substantial both before and after the early pandemic. High rates of loneliness and social isolation occurred in several sociodemographic groups, especially those with self-reported fair or poor physical or mental health. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Preeti N. Malani, MD, MSJ, email pmalani@umich.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at ...

Loneliness and isolation among older Americans have mostly returned to pre-pandemic rates, but that still means more than one third of people age 50 to 80 feel lonely, and nearly as many feel isolated, a new national study shows. And some older adults – especially those dealing with major physical health or mental health issues – still have much higher rates of loneliness and social isolation than others. The new findings, from a review of six years of data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, are published in JAMA by a team from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. Starting ...

The asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10  kilometers across. That’s about as wide as Brooklyn. Such a massive impactor is predicted to hit Earth rarely, once every 100 million to 500 million years.  In contrast, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, can strike Earth more frequently, every few years. These “decameter” asteroids, measuring just tens of meters across, are more likely to escape the main asteroid belt and migrate in to become near-Earth objects. ...

About The Study: This cohort study found no evidence that high dementia risk among former professional soccer players was associated with potentially modifiable general health and lifestyle dementia risk factors. These data support continuation of measures directed toward reducing exposure to repetitive head impacts and traumatic brain injury in sport. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, William Stewart, MBChB, PhD, email william.stewart@glasgow.ac.uk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

About The Study: The findings of this cohort study suggest that early-life surgical removal of tonsils or adenoids is associated with a higher future risk of stress-related disorders and highlight a need to understand the role of adenotonsillar diseases or associated health conditions in the development of stress-related psychiatric disorders.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Zhe Zhang, MD, PhD, email zhangzhe@gxmu.edu.cn. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

About The Study: This analysis documented the continued high burden of medically attended respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-associated acute respiratory illness among young children in the U.S. Nirsevimab and maternal RSV vaccine uptake was low, but nirsevimab was effective against RSV-associated hospitalization. There is a potential for substantial public health impact with increased and equitable prevention product coverage in future seasons. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Heidi L. Moline, MD, MPH, email ick6@cdc.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.5572) Editor’s ...

PHILADELPHIA— For the first time, researchers used lab-grown organoids created from tumors of individuals with glioblastoma (GBM) to accurately model a patient’s response to CAR T cell therapy in real time. The organoid’s response to therapy mirrored the response of the actual tumor in the patient’s brain. That is, if the tumor-derived organoid shrunk after treatment, so did the patient’s actual tumor, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, published today in Cell Stem Cell. “It’s hard to measure how a patient with GBM responds to treatment because we can’t regularly ...

Analyzing the sequence of proteins in cohort studies is done by comparing participant data against protein sequences predicted from the human genome. – Today, the same reference proteins are used for all participants, says associate professor Marc Vaudel at the department of Clinical Science of the University of Bergen – but we are all different! We found that the small genetic changes that make us who we are create a bias: for those who differ from the reference, current informatic methods are blind to parts of their proteins. To solve this problem, the researchers in Bergen developed new models to build sequences from large genetic ...

(Toronto, December 9, 2024) In a pivotal step toward improving research standards in health care technologies, the Journal of Medical Internet Research has published the RATE-XR guideline. This new tool aims to standardize reporting for early-phase clinical studies involving extended reality (XR) technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. Developed through a robust, expert-driven process, RATE-XR addresses critical gaps in transparency, safety, and ethical reporting, ensuring XR applications meet the needs of patients and researchers alike. Led by a multidisciplinary team of international experts, RATE-XR offers a checklist comprising 17 XR-specific ...

A research team led by Prof. Julia Esser-von Bieren from the Center of Allergy and Environment (ZAUM) at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich, as well as the University of Lausanne (UNIL) has uncovered a molecular strategy employed by worm parasites (helminths) to evade host immune defenses. This discovery opens new avenues for the development of innovative vaccines and therapies. Published in Science Immunology, the study offers promising solutions for addressing major infectious diseases, allergies, and asthma by leveraging ...

AUSTIN, TX, Dec 9, 2024 – School shooting incidents have doubled in the last three years, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, which tracks each time a firearm is discharged on school property. Many schools have taken measures to improve safety, including metal detectors, interior door locks, emergency drills, and undercover security. But do students and staff feel any safer?  Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) conducted a nationwide study of K-12 parents, K-12 teachers, and recently graduated high school students to test their responses ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 9, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute has announced a groundbreaking joint industry project (JIP) to help spur the growth and innovation of fueling technologies and infrastructure for hydrogen-powered heavy-duty vehicles. SwRI’s H2HD REFUEL (Hydrogen Heavy Duty Refueling Equipment and Facilities Utilization Evaluation Laboratory) JIP aims to strengthen the acceptance of hydrogen fuel use by heavy-duty vehicles to help the mobility industry meet its decarbonization and zero-emissions goals by advancing hydrogen refueling station (HRS) technologies. Over the next four years, SwRI researchers will use hands-on ...

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe—not a flaw in telescope measurements—may be behind the decadelong mystery of why the universe is expanding faster today than it did in its infancy billions of years ago. The new data confirms Hubble Space Telescope measurements of distances between nearby stars and galaxies, offering a crucial cross-check to address the mismatch in measurements of the universe’s mysterious expansion. Known as the Hubble tension, the discrepancy remains unexplained even by the best cosmology models. “The ...