DALLAS (SMU) – A new study from SMU psychologist Sarah Kucker and colleagues reveals that passive video use among toddlers can negatively affect language development, but their caregiver’s motivations for exposing them to digital media could also lessen the impact. Results show that children between the ages of 17 and 30 months spend an average of nearly two hours per day watching videos – a 100 percent increase from prior estimates gathered before the COVID pandemic. The research reveals a negative association between high levels of digital media watching and children’s vocabulary development. Children exposed to videos ...

SAN ANTONIO — February 20, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute will host its second Automotive Corrosion Symposium in Detroit April 11-12. The event, first held in 2022, is designed to foster communication among corrosion experts from within automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as well as material, paint and other automotive suppliers over a wide spectrum of industry-identified corrosion issues. “Corrosion is a concern within the automotive industry, not just for cosmetic reasons, but because it can affect functionality and safety,” said SwRI Staff Engineer James Dante, one of the organizers ...

A Rutgers professor who studies and improves the design of algorithms – human-made instructions computers follow to solve problems and perform computations – has been selected to receive a 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship. Aaron Bernstein, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, was named one of 126 researchers drawn from a select group of 53 institutions in the U.S. and Canada. The award honors extraordinary creativity, innovation and the potential to become a scientific ...

Tokyo, The Digital Olfaction Society (DOS) announces a global initiative for 2025, aiming to digitize and transmit scents from various locations around the world for reproduction in Tokyo. This project intends to capture a wide range of fragrances representing the cultural diversity of the globe, leading to a significant development in Tokyo. Invitation for Worldwide Participation DOS invites teams from around the world to participate in this initiative. Whether located in major cities such as Berlin, New York, Dubai, or any place with a distinctive aroma, contributions ...

Researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Riga Technical University and the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente have succeeded in arranging very small particles (10 µm to 500 nm, 10 to 100 times thinner than a human hair) in a thin layer without using solvents. This is a hugely important first step towards developing a new generation of sensors and electronics for a wide range of applications. “Common methods based on crystallising solutions are ...

By analysing ancient DNA, an international team of researchers have uncovered cases of chromosomal disorders, including what could be the first case of Edwards syndrome ever identified from prehistoric remains. The team identified six cases of Down syndrome and one case of Edwards syndrome in human populations that were living in Spain, Bulgaria, Finland, and Greece from as long ago as 4,500 years before today. The research indicated that these individuals were buried with care, and often with special grave goods, showing that they were appreciated as members of their ancient societies.  The global collaborative study, led by first author Dr ...

Smiling for just a split second makes people more likely to see happiness in expressionless faces, new University of Essex research has revealed.  The study led by Dr Sebastian Korb, from the Department of Psychology, shows that even a brief weak grin makes faces appear more joyful.  The pioneering experiment used electrical stimulation to spark smiles and was inspired by photographs made famous by Charles Darwin.  A painless current manipulated muscles momentarily into action – ...

Harbir Antil, Professor, Mathematical Sciences; Director, Center for Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (CMAI), received funding for the project: “Efficient Algorithms for Optimization Problems with PDE Constraints.”  Antil and his collaborators are examining generic optimization problems constrained by partial differential equations (PDEs) with or without uncertainty. In case of uncertainty, a risk-averse optimization framework will be developed. Decomposition and Compression techniques will be utilized to overcome the high computational costs. Several applications in various disciplines such ...

Older people may be at greater risk of developing pancreatic cancer and have poorer prognoses because of age-related changes in cells in the pancreas called fibroblasts, according to research led by investigators from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.  The study, published online Feb. 8 in Cancer Research, provides clues as to why pancreatic cancer is more common and aggressive in older people. It may also help scientists develop ...

The University of Birmingham has signed a collaboration agreement with Vital Energi to develop and commercialise a range of innovative thermal storage solutions, which will help accelerate decarbonisation within the heating and cooling sector. The University and Vital Energi will work together over an initial four years to continue the development of thermal storage Intellectual Property (IP) with a view to bringing a number of products to market. As part of the agreement, the University has assigned several IP rights, including a number of patents, to Vital Energi. The implementation of thermal energy storage is imperative to address the challenges posed ...

Oocytes are immature egg cells that develop in almost all female mammals before birth. The propagation of future generations depends on this finite reserve of cells surviving for many years without incurring damage. In mice, this can be a period of up to eighteen months, while in humans it can last almost half a century, the average time between birth and menopause. How the cells accomplish this remarkable feat of longevity has been a longstanding question.  Researchers at the Centre for Genomic ...

A few years ago, astronomers uncovered one of the Milky Way’s greatest secrets:  an enormous, wave-shaped chain of gaseous clouds in our sun’s backyard, giving birth to clusters of stars along the spiral arm of the galaxy we call home. Naming this astonishing new structure the Radcliffe Wave, in honor of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, where the undulation was originally discovered, the team now reports in Nature that the Radcliffe Wave not only looks like a wave, but also moves like one – oscillating through space-time much like “the wave” moving through a stadium full of fans. Ralf Konietzka, the paper’s ...

About The Study: Housing instability, as measured by eviction filings, was associated with a significantly increased risk of death over the first 20 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in this study that included 282,000 renters who received an eviction filing. Eviction prevention efforts may have reduced excess mortality for renters during this period.  Authors: Nick Graetz, Ph.D., of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2024 — The freshness of animal meat is an essential property determining its quality and safety. With advanced technology capable of preserving food for extended periods of time, meat can be shipped around the globe and consumed long after an animal dies. As global meat consumption rates increase, so too does the demand for effective measures for its age. Despite the technological advances keeping meat fresh for as long as possible, certain aging processes are unavoidable. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) ...

An international genetic study using multiancestry biobanks has identified novel genetic locations associated with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), the most common type of glaucoma and the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally. The findings, published Feb. 20 in Cell Reports Medicine, detail ancestry- and sex-specific genetic loci associated with POAG and implicate vascular and cancer-related genes in POAG risk.  “Although there has been significant progress using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to explore the genetic pathophysiology of glaucoma in humans, there is still a lack of understanding of the underlying ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage among young adults did not increase during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with prior years. This finding likely reflects pandemic-related disruptions in initiating the HPV vaccine among young adults.  Authors: Kalyani Sonawane, Ph.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.56875) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for ...

About The Study: In a study of 1,764 women with breast cancer, living in a historically redlined area was associated with increased odds of a diagnosis of estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer in non-Hispanic Black women and increased odds of late-stage diagnosis in non-Hispanic white women. Persistent mortgage discrimination was associated with an increase in breast cancer mortality in non-Hispanic white women, and non-Hispanic Black women were more likely to die of breast cancer no matter where they lived.  Authors: Jasmine M. Miller-Kleinhenz, Ph.D., of Emory University in Atlanta, is the corresponding author.  To ...

For many years, researchers at MPI-EVA have been collecting and analyzing ancient DNA from humans who lived during the past tens of thousands of years. Analyzing these data has allowed the researchers to trace the movement and mixing of people, and even to uncover ancient pathogens that affected their lives. However, a systematic study of uncommon genetic conditions had not been attempted. One of those uncommon conditions, known as Down Syndrome, affects nowadays around one in 1,000 births. To their surprise, Adam “Ben” Rohrlach and colleagues identified six individuals ...

NEW YORK, NY — The human brain has the extraordinary ability to rapidly discern a stranger from someone familiar, even as it can simultaneously remember details about someone across decades of encounters. Now, in mouse studies, scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute have revealed how the brain elegantly performs both tasks. “These findings are the first evidence that a single population of neurons can use different codes to represent novel and familiar individuals,” said co-corresponding author Stefano Fusi, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and ...

Kale fans can rest easy knowing pesticides used to grow the hearty greens are unlikely to end up in their salads or smoothies, a new chemical analysis of the superfood suggests.  Conducting novel tests that provide the most complete picture to date of a crop’s chemical makeup, the Johns Hopkins–led team found several pesticides and compounds in Maryland-farmed kale—but no cause for alarm. “We do see minute traces of pesticides in the kale, but the levels we found are so much lower ...

Key takeaways A UCLA-led research team found a correlation between certain aspects of early puberty in first-born daughters and high levels of prenatal stress in their mothers. The researchers did not find the same result in boys or in daughters who were not first-born. This early maturation may enable a first-born daughter to help her mother rear her other children successfully, according to UCLA anthropologist Molly Fox. A UCLA-led team of researchers has found a correlation between early signs of adrenal puberty in first-born daughters ...

The testis is responsible for sperm production and testosterone synthesis. Abnormalities in testis development and function lead to disorders of sex development (DSD) and male infertility. Currently, no in vitro system exists for modeling the testis.   Dr. Nitzan Gonen, a researcher specializing in the process of fetal sex determination, together with research students Aviya Stopel, Cheli Lev and Stav Dahari, has succeeded in creating "laboratory testicles" that may significantly advance understanding of the mechanisms involved in sex determination and provide solutions for male infertility, which affects one in 12 men worldwide.   The artificial testicles ...

In the realm of materials science, electromagnetic (EM) metamaterials have emerged as a revolutionary class of engineered composites capable of manipulating electromagnetic waves in ways never before possible. Unlike their naturally occurring counterparts, EM metamaterials derive their extraordinary properties from their unique structural arrangements, allowing them to exhibit unattainable electromagnetic characteristics in conventional materials. One of the most fascinating characteristics of EM metamaterials lies in the realm of zero-index metamaterials (ZIMs). ZIMs possess the ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – In the classic Disney film “Beauty and the Beast,” Lumière, the candelabra character, famously sings with Mrs. Potts, a tea pot, “Be our guest, be our guest. Put our service to the test. Tie your napkin round your neck, Cherie, and we provide the rest.” When the 1991 Oscar-nominated song co-written by Indiana University alumnus Howard Ashman was released, it hardly seemed realistic that a product could sing its own praises and sell itself to consumers. But artificial intelligence today makes ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Ultrahigh-spatial-resolution photon-counting detector CT improved assessment of coronary artery disease (CAD), allowing for reclassification to a lower disease category in 54% of patients, according to a new study published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The technology has the potential to improve patient management and reduce unnecessary interventions. Coronary CT angiography is a first-line test in the assessment of coronary artery disease. However, its diagnostic value is limited in patients with severe calcifications, or calcium ...