A groundbreaking University of Bristol study has shed light on how lizards and snakes -the most diverse group of land vertebrates with nearly 12,000 species - have evolved remarkably varied jaw shapes, driving their extraordinary ecological success. This research, led by a team of evolutionary biologists and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B today, offers a new understanding of the intricate factors influencing the evolution of lower jaw morphology in these animals, known collectively as lepidosaurs. The researchers discovered that jaw shape evolution in lepidosaurs is influenced by a complex interplay of factors beyond ecology, ...

Higher cardiorespiratory fitness in older age is linked to the preservation of several core aspects of cognitive ability that are vulnerable to age-related decline, finds research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. And this association holds true irrespective of key risk factors for cognitive decline: age and carriage of the high risk APOE4 gene, the findings show.  Cardiorespiratory fitness is a physiological measure of aerobic capacity that can be modified by regular ...

Around 1 in 5 of the world’s under 50s—846 million people—are living with genital herpes infection, suggest the latest global estimates, published online in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.   And more than 200 million 15-49 year olds probably had at least one symptomatic outbreak of the infection in 2020, the latest year for which figures are available, the data analysis suggests. The findings prompt the researchers to call for the development of new treatments and vaccines ...

Cutting early life exposure to parental smoking may lower the risk of developing MS (multiple sclerosis) in those who are genetically predisposed to the disease, finds research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. The interplay of genes and environmental factors, including smoking, alter key aspects of brain structure in early childhood, likely facilitating development of the disease and suggesting that there may be a window of opportunity to stave this off, conclude the researchers. MS is an autoimmune disease that is typically diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. But ...

About The Study: Compared with noninvasive ventilation, high-flow nasal oxygen met prespecified criteria for noninferiority for the primary outcome of endotracheal intubation or death within 7 days in 4 of the 5 patient groups with acute respiratory failure. However, the small sample sizes in some patient groups and the sensitivity of the findings to the choice of analysis model suggests the need for further study in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunocompromised patients, and patients with acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema. Corresponding Author: To ...

New research has found hedgehogs living in the same, semi-rural area have wide variation in hibernation timing and pattern, with some entering hibernation as much as three months later than others. The researchers say this flexibility could help them adapt to climate change and urbanisation. In a new study, researchers at Liverpool John Moores University monitored the hibernation patterns of wild hedgehogs living on a disused golf course on the Wirral. The research, which is yet to be published, will be presented at the British Ecological Society’s (BES) Annual meeting in Liverpool ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:01 GMT WEDNESDAY 11 DECEMBER / 19:01 ET TUESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2024 Leading ecologists have devised a new framework to classify how biodiversity credit operators define what a unit of nature is. The new analysis demonstrates the challenges involved with devising a biodiversity credit market to fund nature recovery, and the risks of relying too heavily on ‘offsetting.’ Nature conservation faces an estimated $700 billion annual funding gap, in order to halt and begin to reverse ...

New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), in conjunction with NYU Tandon School of Engineering, has officially opened and launched applications for New York City’s new digital game design incubator—the Game Design Future Lab (GDFL)—within NYU Tandon Future Labs, a startup incubator network operator founded 15 years ago with initial funding from NYCEDC. The Game Design Future Lab taps into New York City’s growing digital game development industry and aims to enable developer growth and success through personalized and strategic mentorship, industry-specific and fundamental ...

It wasn’t that long ago when cigarettes and soda were go-to convenience store vices, glamorized in movies and marketed toward, well, everyone. Then, lawmakers and voters raised taxes on cigarettes, and millions of dollars went into public education campaigns about smoking’s harms. Decades of news coverage chronicled how addictive and dangerous cigarettes were and the enormous steps companies took to hide the risks and hook more users. The result: a radical shift in social norms that made it less acceptable to smoke and ...

About The Study: In adult trauma patients, an early restrictive oxygen strategy compared with a liberal oxygen strategy initiated in the prehospital setting or on trauma center admission for 8 hours did not significantly reduce death and/or major respiratory complications within 30 days.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jacob Steinmetz, MD, PhD, email jacob.steinmetz@regionh.dk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.25786) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA –  Machine-learning models can make mistakes and be difficult to use, so scientists have developed explanation methods to help users understand when and how they should trust a model’s predictions. These explanations are often complex, however, perhaps containing information about hundreds of model features. And they are sometimes presented as multifaceted visualizations that can be difficult for users who lack machine-learning expertise to fully comprehend. To help people make sense of AI explanations, MIT researchers used large language models (LLMs) to transform plot-based explanations into plain language. They developed ...

Siddarth Kara’s bestseller, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of Congo Powers Our Lives,” focuses on problems surrounding the sourcing of cobalt, a critical component of lithium-ion batteries that power many technologies central to modern life, from mobile phones and pacemakers to electric vehicles. “Perhaps many of us have read how lithium-ion batteries are vital for energy storage technologies,” says Eric Schelter, the Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. “But how material that make up such batteries are sourced can be concerning and problematic, both ethically and environmentally.” Schelter ...

Fukuoka, Japan—Sustainable practices in business are more than just an ethical responsibility; they make sound financial sense. Researchers from Kyushu University, in a study published on December 10, 2024, in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, reveal that companies with better environmental performance and transparent disclosures can lower costs and boost profits. Investors are increasingly recognizing companies' contributions toward carbon neutrality, driving the growth of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. To support this trend, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has provided an industry-specific framework ...

Self-driving cars rely on artificial intelligence to predict where nearby cars will go. But when those predictions don’t match reality, that discrepancy can potentially lead to crashes and less safe roadways. That’s why a recent study from the University of Georgia developed a new AI model to make self-driving cars safer. This study introduces an AI model for self-driving cars, designed to predict the movement of nearby traffic and incorporate innovative features for planning safe vehicle movements. "The planned trajectory of the self-driving car may turn out to collide with the actual trajectory of another vehicle.” —Qianwen Li, College ...

Researchers at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have  realized a new design for a superconducting quantum processor, aiming at a potential architecture for the large-scale, durable devices the quantum revolution demands. Unlike the typical quantum chip design that lays the information-processing qubits onto a 2-D grid, the team from the Cleland Lab has designed a modular quantum processor comprising a reconfigurable router as a central hub. This enables any two qubits to connect and entangle, where in the ...

You’re standing at a bus stop, waiting for a ride that seems like it will never come. At first, you’re hopeful that it will be here any second. But as the minutes laggardly drag on, doubt creeps in. Should you keep waiting, or is it smarter to start walking or call for a ride?  “It’s a classic dilemma. “Do you persist with the belief that the bus is on its way, or do you cut your losses and move on to something else?” asks Joe Kable, a psychologist in the School of Arts ...

AUSTIN, TX, Dec 10, 2024 – Electric Vehicles (EVs) represent a promising mode of transportation that can help the United States reduce its carbon emissions. But barriers such as the high cost of installing and using EV Charging Stations (EVCS), their limitations in supplying emerging demand, and their uneven distribution throughout the country limit access for many Americans.   Researchers at the University of Maryland are using supercomputers and machine learning methods to analyze a full year of real-time data collected from individual EV charging ports at more than 50,000 publicly available stations throughout the country. The primary focus of the study is ...

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, which emerge in extreme astrophysical environments—like the roiling environments near black holes and neutron stars—have far more energy than the energetic particles that emerge from our sun. In fact, the particles that make up these streams of energy have around 10 million times the energy of particles accelerated in the most extreme particle environment on earth, the human-made Large Hadron Collider. Where does all that energy come from? For many years, scientists believed it came from ...

Different types of cancer have unique molecular ‘fingerprints’ which are detectable in early stages of the disease and can be picked up with near-perfect accuracy by small, portable scanners in just a few hours, according to a study published today in the journal Molecular Cell.   The discovery by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona sets the foundation for creating new, non-invasive diagnostic tests that detect different types of cancer faster and earlier than currently possible.   The study centres around the ribosome, the protein factories of a cell. For decades, ribosomes were thought ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2024 – Two years ago, a medical professional approached scientists at the University of Tabriz in Iran with an interesting problem: Patients were having headaches after pacemaker implants. Working together to investigate, they began to wonder if the underlying issue is the materials used in the pacemakers. “Managing external noise that affects patients is crucial,” author Baraa Chasib Mezher said. “For example, a person with a brain pacemaker may experience interference from external electrical fields from phones ...

About The Study: This study highlights the detrimental association of not attaining a high school degree, combined with high allostatic load as a marker of chronic stress, with cancer mortality. Efforts to promote educational attainment and address the underlying social determinants of health are imperative in reducing cancer disparities in this population.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Justin X. Moore, PhD, MPH, email jx.moore@uky.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

Cyber security experts studying memory modules in computers have uncovered a key security weakness that has led to worldwide security fixes in AMD computer processors.  The weakness occurs because of ‘BadRAM’ - rogue memory modules that deliberately provide false information to the computer’s processor during startup.  Processors are present in every computer and are necessary to perform every calculation. The computer’s memory (DRAM) is essential for storing code and data. When a computer ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of children’s sleep disparities, racially and ethnically minoritized children exhibited disparities in mean levels and variability of sleep compared with their white peers. These findings suggest that policies and practices should target multiple sleep dimensions among diverse racial and ethnic groups to promote equitable pediatric sleep health.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Yijie Wang, PhD, email yjwang@msu.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.49861) Editor’s ...

Key takeaways  The American College of Surgeons Geriatric Surgery Verification program significantly decreases hospital stays among older cancer patients, according to researchers who implemented the program at their institution.  After implementing the program, patients undergoing major abdominal oncologic procedures also maintained higher levels of independence and were more likely to be discharged home.  Researchers found the program addresses the unique needs of older cancer patients by focusing on multiple aspects of care.  CHICAGO — ...

PHILADELPHIA—The Pew Charitable Trusts announced today the eight pairs of researchers who will make up its 2024 class of Innovation Fund investigators. These 16 acclaimed scientists—all alumni of Pew’s biomedical programs in the United States and Latin America—will collaborate on interdisciplinary research projects that explore foundational questions about human biology and disease. By combining their expertise in topic areas ranging from cell biology and immunology to neuroscience and genetics, these partnerships will help to advance scientific discovery and improve human ...