Patients with frontotemporal dementia often lack the ability to empathize. A study at Karolinska Institutet has now shown that these patients do not show the same brain activity as healthy individuals when they witness the pain of others, a finding that it is hoped will increase understanding of this specific dementia disease. Around 25 000 Swedes are affected by dementia every year. Of these, about three percent are diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. The disease is difficult to diagnose, but one of its characteristics is that sufferers lose the ability to empathize, which can lead to problems for them, and not least ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Gastric balloons — silicone balloons filled with air or saline and placed in the stomach — can help people lose weight by making them feel too full to overeat. However, this effect eventually can wear off as the stomach becomes used to the sensation of fullness. To overcome that limitation, MIT engineers have designed a new type of gastric balloon that can be inflated and deflated as needed. In an animal study, they showed that inflating the balloon before a meal caused the animals to reduce their food intake by 60 percent. This type of intervention ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has approved funding awards totaling more than $156 million for new patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER), as well as research to improve methods and strengthen the science of engagement in CER. The awards will support 13 CER studies, including three focused on sleep interventions. “Poor sleep affects more than 50 million people in the United States and is linked to multiple chronic conditions and negative health outcomes,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, M.D., MPH. “These ...

ATLANTA — Debra Bangasser, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) at Georgia State University, has been awarded the Daniel H. Efron Research Award by the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). The award recognizes outstanding basic research contributions to the field of neuropsychopharmacology, which integrates neuroscience and pharmacology to advance understanding of the causes of psychiatric disorders and develop new therapies. Bangasser’s research identifies how stress throughout the lifespan affects the brain to promote ...

SEATTLE, WASH.—December 3, 2024—The funding, provided through the Allen Distinguished Investigators, a program of The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group at the Allen Institute, will fuel innovative research in Organelle Communication and Membrane Biophysics. Together these awards represent a total of $9 million dollars in funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which will be distributed between 14 researchers investigating the biological principles governing fundamental cellular functions and how they interact. These ...

Voice experiments in people with epilepsy have helped trace the circuit of electrical signals in the brain that allow its hearing center to sort out background sounds from their own voices. Such auditory corollary discharge signals start and end in two subregions of the brain’s top folded surface, or cortex, a new study shows. One large part of the cortex, the motor cortex, is known to control the body’s voluntary muscle movements, including those involved in speech, while another large section, the auditory cortex, is known to control hearing. In terms of evolution, the ability of animals and humans to tell ...

CLEVELAND—With a new five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Mass Eye and Ear will study what causes acquired hearing loss (AHL) and seek new ways to protect against it. AHL is among the most common health conditions affecting older adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although hearing aids can help, AHL has no known cure and, in many cases, scientists are still unsure of its exact cause. AHL significantly ...

Florida Atlantic University’s Marcus Institute of Integrative Health has been awarded a monumental $6 million grant from the late Bernie Marcus and The Marcus Foundation to broaden its services, enhance educational programs, and expand community wellness initiatives, ultimately aiming to create a national model that demonstrates the effectiveness of comprehensive integrative health as the optimal approach for achieving overall well-being for everyone. This latest grant to FAU from The Marcus Foundation, which was made prior to the passing of Marcus in early November, brings its total contributions for advancing integrative health to more than $10 million, ...

Researchers led by Uljana Kravčenko and her colleagues in the lab of Professor Misha Kudryashev, Group Leader of the In Situ Structural Biology lab at the Max Delbrück Center, have revealed new features of the molecular architecture of synaptic vesicles. Using cryo-electron tomography, the team was able to visualize SVs in 3D and confirm a potentially important protein-protein interaction. They also broadened our understanding of SV function and of how the vesicles are recycled. The study was published in the Proceedings ...

From the RMS Titanic to the SS Endurance, shipwrecks offer valuable — yet swiftly deteriorating — windows into the past. Conservators slowly dry marine wooden artifacts to preserve them but doing so can inflict damage. To better care for delicate marine artifacts, researchers in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering developed a new hydrogel that quickly neutralizes harmful acids and stabilized waterlogged wood from an 800-year-old shipwreck. Wooden artifacts from shipwrecks are drenched with seawater, an environment that enables acid-producing ...

To study the effects of misinformation on attitudes, some social science experiments expose participants to false, misleading, or dangerous information. Most Institutional Review Boards require that such studies be followed by a debriefing session, in which participants are told that the information that was presented was not true. Katherine Clayton and colleagues sought to determine whether these debriefs can “undo” the effects of exposure to misinformation. The authors first replicated existing misinformation ...

Vadim N. Gladyshev and 80 colleagues surveyed the participants of the 2022 Systems Aging Gordon Research Conference to explore how researchers of aging perceive their subject of study. The authors found wide disagreement on fundamental questions, including “what is aging?” and “what causes aging?”. The collected responses indicated that some of the 103 professors, postdocs, graduate students, industry professionals, and other experts in the survey saw aging as a demographic increase in mortality rate, while other respondents saw aging as a loss of function over time, while still other respondents saw aging as the accumulation of damage ...

New research builds on scientific understanding of how air pollution and cancer risk are distributed throughout the U.S. Air pollution, often resulting from industrial or vehicle emissions, can travel for hundreds of miles and impact the health of communities through higher rates of asthma, respiratory infections, stroke, and lung cancer. Although previous studies have identified disparities in how public health risks vary by income and race, a new study takes a detailed look across U.S. census tracts to find patterns in who is most at risk from cancer resulting from lifetime exposure to air pollution and how ...

An experimental study in mice shows that SARS-CoV-2 infection can damage the retinas, with long-term implications for vision. Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection include various neurocognitive symptoms, suggesting the virus can affect the central nervous system. The eyes are also part of the central nervous system, but little is known about the virus’s effects on these organs. David Williams and Nan Hultgren led a study in which transgenic mice that express human SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 were infected with ...

Inspired by the diverse attachment organs of parasites, researchers have designed a millimeter-scale mechanism for soft tissue anchoring. Robert J. Wood and colleagues turned to the world of parasites as inspiration for developing methods to affix small-scale medical devices to the gastrointestinal tract or other soft tissues for sensing, sample collection, and extended drug release. While evolution has produced a wide range of different biomechanical structures that can attach to soft tissues, the authors ...

3 December 2024 – EMBO announces the selection of 27 life scientists as the newest members of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. The programme supports young group leaders in Europe and beyond. The new young investigators will start in January, be active members of the programme for four years, and become part of an international network of nearly 800 current and former EMBO Young Investigators, Installation Grantees and Global Investigators. They carry out research across a wide range of life sciences topics from cell and computational biology to immunology and neuroscience. "EMBO welcomes ...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a leading cause of chronic liver diseases, that spreads among individuals through blood or body fluids. According to the World Health Organization, globally 1.2 million new HBV infections are reported every year. Caused by the HBV, these infections are limited to a few species, including humans and chimpanzees. Despite their close evolutionary relationship with these animals, old-world monkeys are not susceptible to HBV infections. In a new study published in Nature Communications on October 25, 2024, scientists including Dr. Kaho Shionoya from the Tokyo University of Science, Dr. Jae-Hyun Park, Dr. Toru Ekimoto, Dr. Mitsunori Ikeguchi, and Dr. Sam-Yong ...

PULLMAN, Wash. -- The first-known direct observations of the movement of microfiber plastics through a thin layer of soil-like particles show that they tend to tumble, roll and sometimes get stuck in spaces.  The findings, reported in the journal, Water Resources Research, mean that the fibers could get easily trapped in sediment. The work helps to improve understanding of the exposure risks and possible health impacts of the pervasive pieces of plastic, which are the largest pollutant in the world by mass. “The ...

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem proudly congratulates two of its esteemed researchers for receiving prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grants. These grants, each valued at approximately 2 million euros, are awarded to researchers leading innovative projects and join a long tradition of Hebrew University scholars who have been recognized with this honor in previous years. The recipients from Hebrew University are: Prof. Dina Schneidman, The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering, for her research titled "Deep Learning for Structure-Based Discovery of Adaptive Immune Receptors." Prof. Schneidman’s research ...

In the future, we could fuel the world with sunlight and water – using sunlight to derive hydrogen fuel from H2O. Currently, most hydrogen that’s used as feedstock and fuel is derived from natural gas, and therefore doesn’t help us cut out fossil fuels. But Japanese scientists are leading the way towards a future powered by hydrogen, with new, easily-manufactured photocatalytic sheets and a proof-of-concept panel reactor which shows that it is possible to refine hydrogen fuel from water at scale.  “Sunlight-driven water splitting using photocatalysts is an ideal technology for solar-to-chemical ...

CHICAGO – Skeletal muscle loss is a risk factor for developing dementia, according to a study being presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Skeletal muscles make up about one-third of a person’s total body mass. They are connected to the bones and allow for a wide range of movements. As people grow older, they begin to lose skeletal muscle mass. Because age-related skeletal muscle loss is often seen in older adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia, this study aimed to examine whether temporalis muscle ...

CHICAGO – A minimally invasive procedure provides significant relief from knee pain and may prevent the need for knee replacement surgery in people with osteoarthritis, according to a study being presented this week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “This study addresses osteoarthritis, which is a significant public health issue and the leading cause of chronic pain and disability worldwide,” said the study’s lead author, Florian Nima Fleckenstein, M.D., interventional radiologist at Charité – University Hospital Berlin in Germany. “With millions of people affected by knee ...

A group of scientists, including researchers from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Princeton University and Carleton University, has questioned the accuracy and utility of the metaphor “tipping point” in calling attention to the threat of climate change. The phrase, while perhaps initially useful as a clarion call that warns about sudden, drastic changes, may now be confusing the public and impeding action, researchers said. Writing a perspective in Nature Climate Change, the scientists, from the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Princeton’s Center ...

Plant species can fulfil different functions within an ecosystem, even if they are closely related to each other. This surprising conclusion was reached by a global analysis of around 1.7 million datasets on plant communities. The study was led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of Bologna. Their findings overturn previous assumptions in ecology. The study was published in "Nature Ecology & Evolution" and offers insights for nature conservation. When ...

Specially packaged DNA secreted by tumor cells can trigger an immune response that inhibits the metastatic spread of the tumor to the liver, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Korea’s Yonsei University. The discovery improves the scientific understanding of cancer progression and anticancer immunity, and could yield new clinical tools for assessing and reducing metastasis risk. In the study, reported Dec. 3 in Nature Cancer, the researchers examined cancer cells’ secretion of short stretches of DNA packaged on tiny capsules called extracellular ...