MND is a devastating disease affecting the motor neurones in the brain and spinal cord, leading to progressive muscle weakness and paralysis. Despite decades of research, several scientific challenges continue to impede the development of effective therapies for the thousands of people living with MND in the UK. The MND Research Data Catalyst is a new initiative led by HDR UK and DPUK, with the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) and in partnership with the MND research community, to accelerate the discovery of new diagnostics, treatments and support better care for MND patients. This will be achieved by harnessing the UK’s trustworthy, large-scale health ...

A study conducted through a mobile screening unit in Madrid, Spain from 2017 to 2023 and published in Eurosurveillance found that active hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection decreased from 23% to 6% in that period among people who use drugs (PWUD) that visited the unit. The study found that the use of intravenous drugs was the most significant risk factor for infection among PWUD. It confirmed that HCV screening and treatment programmes targeting this at-risk population are effective and can help achieve the World Health Organization goal of HCV elimination as public health threat by 2030. Study participants and methods Participants were recruited in ‘hotspots’ ...

In 2016, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to deport thousands of immigrants. His anti-immigration message vilified foreign-born people living in the U.S. as criminals and rapists. Besides making good on many harsh, immigration-related promises, the years after his election stoked the anxieties of millions of people.  Now, with Trump once again in contention for the White House, a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, reveals the surprising — and potentially lifelong — association between those early Trump years and the health of society's newest citizens.  In ...

A gentle rumble ran under Ngan Huang’s feet as a rocket carrying her research—live, human muscle cells grown on scaffolds fixed on tiny chips—lifted off, climbed, and disappeared into the sky to the International Space Station National Laboratory. These chips would help Huang better understand muscle impairment, often seen in astronauts and older adults, and test drugs to counter the condition. Now, the results are back. Reporting in a study published July 25 in Stem Cell Reports, Huang’s team showed that space-travelling muscle had metabolic changes that indicate ...

Findings from a small, proof-of-concept clinical trial have suggested that fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs) can boost the effectiveness of immunotherapy in a range of gastrointestinal cancers. In the study, published July 25 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, six of 13 patients who had previously shown resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors benefited from receiving FMTs from donors who had previously responded to treatment. The investigators also identified specific strains of bacteria associated with better or worse responses to FMT and immune checkpoint drugs. “This research highlights the complex interplay between beneficial ...

Newly announced research by Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) examining greenhouse gas emissions from the drying lake bed of Great Salt Lake, Utah, calculates that 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were released in 2020. This research suggests that drying lake beds are an overlooked but potentially significant source of greenhouse gases, which may further increase due to climate change. These results were announced in the paper, “A desiccating saline lake bed is a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions,” published in the journal One Earth. “Human-caused ...

About The Study: Hospitals in communities with the greatest level of socioeconomic disadvantage had the lowest likelihood of becoming stroke certified while hospitals in the most advantaged communities had the highest likelihood in this cohort study. These findings suggest that there is a need to support hospitals in disadvantaged communities to obtain stroke certification as a way to reduce stroke disparities. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Renee Y. Hsia, M.D., M.Sc., email renee.hsia@ucsf.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

About The Study: This cohort study indicates that the risk of dying of breast cancer increases substantially after experiencing a contralateral breast cancer. Women with breast cancer treated with bilateral mastectomy had a greatly diminished risk of contralateral breast cancer; however, they experienced similar mortality rates as patients treated with lumpectomy or unilateral mastectomy.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Steven A. Narod, M.D., email steven.narod@wchospital.ca. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/   (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2024.2212) Editor’s ...

TMDU researchers demonstrate proof of concept of antisense nucleic acid therapy   to prevent the spread of α-synuclein pathologies in synucleinopathies. Tokyo, Japan – Parkinson’s disease (PD), as well as many other neurodegenerative disorders, has shown a link between  the abnormal aggregation of a protein called α-synuclein (aSyn) and neuronal death.  These aggregates, known as Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites depending on their subcellular localization, can spread  by continuously causing normal endogenous aSyn to misfold. The complex nature of this aggregation process poses significant challenges ...

Designing the spatial arrangement of underground powerhouses involves numerous complex parameters and boundaries, requiring frequent reference to various cases and specifications. Traditional methods struggle to efficiently retrieve this information, leading to suboptimal designs and extended project timelines. Due to these challenges, there is a pressing need for a more intelligent and efficient approach to streamline the design process, enhance accuracy, and improve project management in hydropower engineering. Researchers from Tianjin University, in collaboration with PowerChina Kunming Engineering Corporation Limited and other ...

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are highly regarded for their exceptional performance and straightforward fabrication. However, traditional hole transport layers (HTLs) like Poly (triarylamine) (PTAA), Nickel Oxide (NiOx), and poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly (styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT) have inherent limitations that impede efficiency and stability. These materials often suffer from issues such as hydrophobicity, high reactivity, and acidity, which negatively affect the overall performance of PSCs. Due to these challenges, there is a pressing ...

To achieve carbon neutrality, advancements in energy conversion and storage technologies are essential. Current aqueous energy devices suffer from performance limitations due to the trade-off between permeability and selectivity in permselective membranes. This trade-off hampers the efficiency of energy conversion and storage systems, necessitating the development of membranes that can balance these properties effectively. Due to these challenges, further research is required to explore innovative membrane structures that can enhance the performance of energy conversion and storage devices. A research team from Tsinghua University has published a study (DOI: 10.26599/EMD.2024.9370041) ...

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are celebrated for their exceptional photovoltaic performance and affordability. However, the high cost of charge transport materials remains a major obstacle to their commercialization. Conventional materials like 2,2',7,7'-Tetrakis[N,N-di(4-methoxyphenyl)amino]-9,9'-spirobifluorene (Spiro-OMeTAD), are expensive and complex to produce. Therefore, developing low-cost, efficient alternatives is essential to make PSCs more economically viable. Addressing these issues is crucial for advancing solar technology and achieving broader adoption. Hence, this study focuses ...

To date, ceramic scientists have devised various strategies to impede grain coarsening. The utilization of nano-sized precursor powder can not only facilitate the densification process, but also yields bulk ceramics with reduced grain sizes compared with micron-sized precursor powder. Rapid sintering by passes the low-temperature surface diffusion stage and directly enters the high-temperature sintering stage through rapid heating, rendering it an effective way to inhibit grain coarsening. However, these aforementioned strategies fail to prevent coarsening during the application of nano-ceramics in medium- ...

The development of innovative medicines is an expensive, time-consuming and risky business. On average, it usually takes at least a decade and billions of dollars to bring a new drug from project initiation to approval. Identifying effective targets and conducting biological analysis is the first step in the process and remains a top priority in drug development. To facilitate for maximum data privacy and data security, Insilico Medicine ("Insilico"), developed a hardware platform, PandaOmics Box, that does not require Internet access and allows for on-premise biological analytics, target identification, biomarker ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – The radiology gender gap is decreasing, but there remains work to be done, according to an editorial published today in RadioGraphics, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). In 2022, nearly half of residents and fellows in Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)–accredited programs were female. However, less than 27% of active diagnostic radiologists and only 10% of active interventional radiologists are female. Within the 48 largest medical specialty groups, diagnostic radiology ranks 41st and ...

NEW YORK, NY– The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) is pleased to announce a $450,000 grant from The Hearst Foundations in support of the Grants for Junior Faculty program. The Grants for Junior Faculty provide early career investigators with up to $150,000 for one to two years to support research focused on aging processes and age-related diseases. The $450,000 grant from Hearst Foundations will fully underwrite three Grants for Junior Faculty over the next three years. Selected ...

Using two optically trapped glass nanoparticles, researchers observed a novel collective Non-Hermitian and nonlinear dynamic driven by nonreciprocal interactions. This contribution expands traditional optical levitation with tweezer arrays by incorporating the so called non-conservative interactions. Their findings, supported by an analytical model developed by collaborators from Ulm University and the University of Duisburg-Essen, were recently published in Nature Physics. Fundamental forces like gravity and electromagnetism are reciprocal, meaning two ...

New, non-native plant species are constantly being discovered in Svalbard, and researchers are working to ascertain what threat these species pose to the native plants. So far, the Arctic has managed to avoid one of the most serious threats to biodiversity on Earth. This is also true for Svalbard, but things could change very quickly, and researchers want to find out how to counteract this threat. “Increased human activity heightens the risk of new plant species being introduced. And climate change increases the risk of invasive species establishing themselves,” says Kristine Bakke Westergaard. She is an associate ...

Available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime, Texl.org allows individuals and organizations to create scientifically valid surveys in less than five minutes. In drag-and-drop fashion, survey creators can choose from an ever-growing list of 50 validated scales, measuring aspects ranging from team conflict to personal initiative and transformational leadership. “The point of science is to develop knowledge that ultimately is to the benefit of society. Unfortunately, we are not always great in translating our knowledge so that it is usable for practitioners out there. With Texl we’re changing that,” explains Professor Niels Van Quaquebeke, ...

While chemotherapy has advanced in personalization, personalized radiation therapy for cancer remains underdeveloped. Current cancer treatment methods – including radiation therapy – are intricate, lack personalization, and rely heavily on the expertise of medical teams. Medical image analysis and machine learning hold great promise for enhancing personalized oncology. However, challenges persist such as limited high-quality data and data complexity. Wazir Muhammad, Ph.D., principal investigator and ...

HOUSTON and MIAMI ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Summit Therapeutics, Inc. today announced a strategic five-year collaboration agreement for the purpose of accelerating the development of ivonescimab. Leveraging MD Anderson’s clinical infrastructure and research expertise together with Summit’s innovative, investigational, potential first-in-class PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody, the collaboration is designed to quickly discover additional opportunities for ivonescimab, including several tumors outside of its current development plan. MD Anderson will lead multiple clinical trials in several tumor types to evaluate the safety and potential clinical ...

Scientists have known from ice core research that it's easier to melt an ice sheet than to freeze it up again. Now, they know at least part of the reason why, and it has to do with ice's "sponginess," according to a new study published July 24 in The Cryosphere. The study uses a physics-based numerical model to assess the impacts of warming and cooling on firn, the porous layer between snow and glacial ice, over the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. Megan Thompson-Munson, a CIRES and ATOC PhD student, led the study alongside ...

Houston, Texas, July 25, 2024 – The Texas Heart Institute (THI) and BiVACOR®, a clinical-stage medical device company, announced today the successful first-in-human implantation of the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) as part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Early Feasibility Study (EFS) on July 9, 2024. BiVACOR’s TAH is a titanium-constructed biventricular rotary blood pump with a single moving part that utilizes a magnetically levitated rotor that pumps the blood and replaces both ventricles of a failing heart. The first-in-human clinical ...

University of Washington Researchers Take Flight with New Insights on Bat Evolution Video Interview with Authors - https://youtu.be/6rogrh2_HN0 In new research published in PeerJ Life & Environment, researchers from the University of Washington, University of Texas at Austin and Oregon Institute of Technology, led by undergraduate student Abby Burtner, have advanced our understanding of the evolutionary origins of flight in bats. The study, titled "Gliding toward an Understanding of the Origin of Flight in Bats," employs phylogenetic comparative methods to explore the evolutionary transition from gliding to powered flight in these unique mammals. Bats ...