Students in biology classes accepted the theory of evolution more often when it was taught with conflict-reducing practices, including an emphasis on religious compatibility and autonomy, according to a study published December 4, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rahmi Ourota Aini and Elizabeth Barnes from Middle Tennessee State University, U.S., and colleagues. Evolution is of the foundation of biology, but currently half of the United States population rejects the idea of human evolution. One of the most important factors in the acceptance of evolution ...

Higher emotional intelligence is linked to more emoji use with friends, while avoidant attachment is associated with less emoji use with friends and dating or romantic partners, according to a study published December 4, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dr. Simon Dubé, Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, U.S., and colleagues. This pattern of results varies across genders and relationship types, with women using emojis with friends and family more frequently than men. Emojis are characters depicting emotions, objects, animals, and more. They can be sent ...

Scientists have uncovered the first direct evidence that ancient Americans relied primarily on mammoth and other large animals for food. Their research sheds new light on both the rapid expansion of humans throughout the Americas and the extinction of large ice age mammals. The study, featured on the Dec. 4 cover of the journal Science Advances, used stable isotope analysis to model the diet of the mother of an infant discovered at a 13,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana. Before this study, prehistoric diet was inferred by ...

Male African elephants have distinct personality traits, but also adapt their behavior to suit the social context, according to a study publishing December 4, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell at Stanford University and Harvard University Center for the Environment, Jodie L. Berezin of Utopia Scientific, U.S., and colleagues. Many animals show consistent individual differences in behavior, sometimes described as ‘personality’ or ‘temperament’. Elephants are highly intelligent and have rich social lives, and previous research has shown that captive ...

    KEY TAKEAWAYS A team led by researchers at Mass General Brigham built the first immunology-focused biobank with samples from patients who experienced out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Samples from the biobank provided a unique window into the immunological changes that take place after cardiac arrest. Researchers uncovered a population of cells that may provide protection from brain injury following cardiac arrest, leading them to examine a drug that can activate these cells to improve neurological outcomes.       Despite ...

Women who have a high genetic risk of depression are more likely to develop heart disease, University of Queensland researchers have found. During a study that analysed genetic and health data from more than 300,000 people, Dr Sonia Shah and Dr Clara Jiang from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience found women who had a high genetic risk of developing depression also had a high risk of developing heart disease, even in the absence of a depression diagnosis. Dr Shah said these results exposed a difference in the risk for women compared ...

A study from researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California San Diego has shed light on a previously poorly understood aspect of breast cancer recurrence: how cancer cells survive in bone marrow despite targeted therapies. The paper, “Breast cancers that disseminate to bone marrow acquire aggressive phenotypes through CX43-related tumor-stroma tunnels,” appears in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.  Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer is the most ...

Closing underperforming hospitals could worsen health inequality in rural areas, finds new study Closing underperforming hospitals may do more harm than good, particularly in rural areas -regardless of their performance status, according to new research from the University of Surrey. The study shows that while the promise of improved care quality often justifies hospital closures, they risk exacerbating health inequalities, particularly for patients who already face longer travel distances for treatment.  The study, published in Regional Science and Urban Economics, which focused on elective hip replacement ...

A basic function of cells is that they act in response to their environments. It makes sense, then, that a goal of scientists is to control that process, making cells respond how they want to what they want. One avenue for this ambition is cell receptors, which function like ignition slots on a cell, requiring keys – such as specific hormones, drugs, or antigens – to start up specific cellular activities. There are already synthetic receptors that give us some control over this sequence of events, most famously the chimeric antigen receptors used in CAR-T cell cancer therapy. But existing synthetic receptors are limited in the variety of keys ...

A UCLA study has outlined a new framework that researchers say would improve predictive power of genetics to determine how well a patient would respond to commonly prescribed medications as well as the severity of any side effects.  Published in the journal Cell Genomics, the study found that data from large libraries of sequenced human genomes and other biological data, known as biobanks, can provide new insights into genetic architecture of response to widely prescribed drugs.  Study first author and UCLA Bioinformatics Ph.D. candidate Michal Sadowski said the most ...

Richard G. Baraniuk, the C. Sidney Burrus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, has been awarded the 2025 IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal. This honor recognizes Baraniuk’s exceptional achievements in signal processing, particularly his pioneering work in multiscale and sparse signal processing. Notably, Baraniuk’s professorship is named after his mentor, Charles Sidney Burrus, a former dean of engineering at Rice, who also won the Kilby Medal in 2009. Baraniuk’s innovative contributions have advanced the theoretical and practical frontiers of signal processing and machine learning. His work has focused on low-dimensional models, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Being lonely is a bigger hurdle to a good night’s sleep for college students than too much time at a computer or other electronic screen, a new study by Oregon State University suggests. The research led by scientists in the OSU College of Liberal Arts is important because both insomnia and loneliness are serious public health concerns and are at epidemic levels among young adults in higher education, the researchers note. Jessee Dietch, John Sy and collaborators at Harvard Medical School and Chaminade University ...

A research team at the University of Göttingen, Germany’s Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) in Rhede, and the Thünen Institute in Braunschweig has investigated the importance of limestone quarries for wild bee conservation. Diverse landscapes with good connectivity between quarries and calcareous grasslands proved to be particularly valuable. Calcareous grasslands – meaning grasslands on chalk or limestone soils – are exceptionally rich in plant and animal species, making them valuable ecosystems. Quarries ...

ROCHESTER, Minn.  — Earlier research showed that primary care clinicians using AI-ECG tools identified more unknown cases of a weak heart pump, also called low ejection fraction, than without AI. New study findings published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health suggest that this type of screening is also cost-effective in the long term, especially in outpatient settings. Incremental drops in heart function are treatable with medication but can be hard to spot. Patients may or may not have symptoms when their heart is not ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Coconut palms are king throughout the tropics, serving as the foundation for human lives and cultures across the Pacific Ocean for centuries. However, 200 years of planting by colonial interests transformed the palm from the revered “Tree of Life” to a cash crop monoculture grown on Pacific atolls for a singular purpose — production of coconut oil (copra) for export around the world. Despite wide interest in the global footprint of palm crops, the distribution of coconut palms across tropical Pacific atolls has received little attention. Until now. Published in Environmental Research Letters, ...

SAN DIEGO ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. This special edition features upcoming oral presentations by MD Anderson researchers at the 66th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, providing ...

Access to psychotherapy has risen substantially among U.S. adults with mild to moderate distress since 2018, according to a new study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The increase in psychotherapy use is particularly notable among younger adults, women, college-educated individuals, and those with higher family incomes. Privately insured individuals also experienced greater gains in psychotherapy use compared to those who are publicly insured or uninsured. The findings are published ...

Over the past decade, the proportion of residents in Stockholm County who identify as bisexual has nearly doubled. The younger generations are driving the trend and many of them have previously identified as heterosexual. This is according to a study published in JAMA Network Open by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with the Centre for Epidemiology and Community Medicine within Region Stockholm in Sweden. The researchers analysed data from the Stockholm Public Health Cohort, covering more than 98,000 individuals from 2002 to 2021. The proportion of people ...

Choosing a film for a movie night is always a battle. Now imagine if you could pick one that provided a window into some of the most fundamental biological processes that keep us alive. For the first time ever, researchers have captured a real-time molecular movie to show how two essential cellular processes – transcription and translation – interact with each other in bacteria. In all living organisms, DNA contains the code that defines cellular structures and functions. An enzyme called RNA polymerase deciphers this code and converts it into RNA, a molecule ...

About The Study: This study found that psychotherapy use increased significantly faster among several socioeconomically advantaged groups and that inequalities were evident in teletherapy access. These trends and patterns highlight a need for clinical interventions and health care policies to broaden access to psychotherapy including teletherapy.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, email mo49@cumc.columbia.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.3903) Editor’s ...

About The Study: Between 2010 and 2022—a time of tremendous attention to maternal health—there was a net loss of hospital-based obstetric care in both rural and urban hospitals across the U.S. In 2010, more than half of rural hospitals and two-thirds of urban hospitals offered obstetric care. Rural hospitals started with lower percentages of hospitals offering obstetrics compared with urban hospitals and experienced a larger increase in the percentage of hospitals without obstetrics.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Katy B. Kozhimannil, PhD, MPA, email Brad Robideau at brobidea@umn.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

  A study by IRB Barcelona unveils how the lack of a fraction of the CPEB4 protein causes a decrease in the expression of genes that are crucial for neuronal development. Published in the journal Nature, the study opens new avenues for the development of targeted treatments for autism. Barcelona, 4 December 2024 –Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by difficulties in communication and social behaviour. Approximately 20% of cases are linked to a specific genetic mutation, but the origin of the remaining 80%, known as idiopathic autism, remains a mystery. A team of scientists led by Drs. Raúl Méndez and Xavier Salvatella at the Institute ...

Researchers at UCSF find a brain signature of resilience in mice that suggests a new way of treating severe depression.  Some people bounce back from trauma, but others get caught in depressive loops that sap the joy from their lives.   Now, scientists at UC San Francisco are learning how the brain creates these divergent experiences. They hope it will help them find a way to treat those who struggle with long-lasting symptoms of stress.  The researchers found that stress changes activity in a brain circuit ...

Fructose consumption has increased considerably over the past five decades, largely due to the widespread use of high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in beverages and ultra-processed foods. New research from Washington University in St. Louis shows that dietary fructose promotes tumor growth in animal models of melanoma, breast cancer and cervical cancer. However, fructose does not directly fuel tumors, according to the study published Dec. 4 in the journal Nature. Instead, WashU scientists discovered that the liver converts fructose into usable nutrients for cancer cells, a compelling finding that could open up new avenues for care and treatment ...

A study published today in Cell uncovers the deep evolutionary roots of flint and dent maize (also commonly known as “corn”), two foundational varieties central to modern maize breeding and cultivation. By analyzing ancient DNA from 32 maize samples spanning the last 3,000 years, researchers have reconstructed the journey of the crop into eastern North America, shedding new light on its geographic origins, dispersal routes, and history of selection. This study was carried out by an international team of scientists and spearheaded ...