Prenatal diagnosis of congenital heart defects – the most common birth defects in the United States – is associated with improved outcomes. Despite its importance, however, overall prevalence of prenatal diagnosis is low (12-50 percent). A recent multi-center study surveyed caretakers of infants who received congenital heart surgery in the Chicago area and found that social determinants or influencers of health constitute significant barriers to prenatal diagnosis from the patients’ perspective. In ...

In a new analysis of data spanning more than three decades in the eastern United States, a team of scientists found a concerning trend – an increasing number of wildfires across a large swath of America.  “It’s a serious issue that people aren’t paying enough attention to: We have a rising incidence of wildfires across several regions of the U.S., not only in the West,” said Victoria Donovan, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of forest management at the UF/IFAS ...

Long-term care facilities that scheduled part-time Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) with more hours and more consistently with the same co-workers had reduced turnover, according to research led by Washington State University. The findings could help address staffing challenges that affect millions of patients at long-term care facilities nationwide.  Using a model based on real scheduling data of thousands of nurse aides, the researchers estimated that a one-hour increase in CNAs’ weekly hours worked could reduce turnover by 1.9%. Also, the analysis found that by scheduling ...

AUSTIN/HOUSTON – TAMEST (Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology) has announced Nidhi Sahni, Ph.D., The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, as the recipient of the 2024 Mary Beth Maddox Award and Lectureship in cancer research. She was chosen for her role in identifying novel biomarkers and drug targets, which are expected to have a significant impact on cancer by translating into more effective prognosis and therapy for the disease.  The Mary Beth Maddox Award and Lectureship recognizes women scientists in Texas bringing new ideas and innovations to the fight ...

A new landmark study involving 281 elite athletes from Australia and Belgium has revealed one in six have measures that would normally suggest reduced heart function.   Genetic analysis published in Circulation conducted by scientists in Australia and Belgium revealed those athletes also had an enrichment of genes associated with heart muscle disease. Thus, a genetic predisposition may be ‘stressed’ by exercise to cause profound heart changes. The international collaboration will continue to monitor the athletes over the long-term to determine the consequences on their heart health. Associate Professor Andre la Gerche, who heads the HEART Laboratory that is jointly ...

Tempe, Ariz., December 18, 2023 – Extreme heat waves, once considered rare, are now frequent and severe in cities due to climate change. Phoenix faced such a brutal heat wave in July of 2023 when it endured 31 consecutive days of high temperatures of at least 110 F. The severity of the heat wave triggered a state of emergency. In June of 2021, the town of Lytton, B.C., Canada, hit a blistering 121 F, leading to a fire that burnt most of the village. This pattern repeated in Europe in 2022, where heat caused fatal illnesses, wildfires and damaged infrastructure, highlighting ...

Scientists looking to uncover the mysteries of the underwater world have more valuable information at their fingertips thanks to an international team that has produced an inventory of species confirmed or expected to produce sound underwater. Led by Audrey Looby from the University of Florida Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, the Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds working group collaborated with the World Register of Marine Species to document 729 aquatic mammals, other tetrapods, fishes, and invertebrates that produce active or passive sounds. In addition, the inventory includes another 21,911 species that ...

Led by Aoxing Liu and senior authors Melinda Mills, Andrea Ganna and an international team, the study examined the link between 414 early-life diseases and lifetime childlessness in over 2.5 million individuals born in Finland and Sweden. In many Western European and East Asian countries, up to 15-20% of individuals born around 1970 are now childless. Although multiple social, economic and individual preferences have been studied, there has been limited research examining the contribution of different diseases to being childless over a lifetime, particularly those diseases with onset prior to the peak reproductive age. Dr Aoxing Liu, lead author ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Some coral species can be resilient to marine heat waves by “remembering” how they lived through previous ones, research by Oregon State University scientists suggests. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, also contains evidence that the ecological memory response is likely linked to the microbial communities that dwell among the corals. The findings, published today in Global Change Biology, are important because coral reefs, crucial to the functioning ...

IOP Publishing is proud to announce the release of ‘Big Science in the 21st Century’, a comprehensive exploration of the impact of Big Science on our society and the new perspectives it opens on evaluating its societal benefits.   Authored by a diverse group of contributors, the book offers a multifaceted view of the challenges, merits, and transformations of Big Science across different disciplines and geographical boundaries. It delves into the transformative role of Big Science in shaping the world we live in, from its historical roots in the aftermath of the Second World War to its contemporary ...

In a spectacular new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have used light and chlorine to eradicate low-concentration methane from air. The result gets us closer to being able to remove greenhouse gases from livestock housing, biogas production plants and wastewater treatment plants to benefit the climate. The research has just been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that reducing methane gas emissions will immediately reduce the rise in global temperatures. The gas is up to 85 times more potent ...

With more of us looking for alternatives to eating animals, new research has found a surprising environmentally friendly source of protein – algae. The University of Exeter study has been published in The Journal of Nutrition and is the first of its kind to demonstrate that the ingestion of two of the most commercially available algal species are rich in protein which supports muscle remodeling in young healthy adults. Their findings suggest that algae may be an interesting and sustainable alternative to animal-derived protein with respect to maintaining and building muscle. Researcher Ino Van Der Heijden ...

Funding an unconventional approach to fighting cancer that emphasizes the integration of diverse scientific disciplines, the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded $3.2 million to establish the Convergent Science Cancer Consortium (CSCC), led by Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences Peter Kuhn at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.  The consortium, which includes Stanford University, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles as inaugural members, unites experts from fields such as biology, engineering, mathematics and computer science, to discover more effective treatment strategies ...

Results from a phase II clinical trial indicate that psilocybin, a hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms of the genus Psiloybe, may benefit individuals with cancer and major depression. Trial participants treated with psilocybin not only experienced a lessening of depressive symptoms but also spoke highly of the therapy when interviewed at the end of the trial. The findings are published by Wiley in two articles appearing online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. By binding to a specific subtype of serotonin receptor in the brain, psilocybin can cause alterations to mood, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. –  Among many parents’ top resolutions for the New Year: More patience, less time on phones, better consistency with discipline and healthier family habits. Their tweens and teens are setting goals too – including achievements related to grades and school, success in an activity, exercise and nutrition and earning money, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. Nearly three in four parents polled report making ...

In the week following any hospital visit for an overdose, only 1 in 18 people with opioid use disorder begin a treatment known to be highly effective in reducing illness and deaths, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231014. “These results highlight critical missed opportunities to prevent future mortality and morbidity related to opioid use, despite connection to health care for many patients in the days after a toxicity event,” writes Dr. Tara Gomes, a researcher at ...

Experts today call for more value to be given to patients’ ‘lived experiences’ as a study of over 1,000 patients and clinicians found multiple examples of patient reports being under-valued. The research, led by a team at the University of Cambridge and Kings’ College London, found that clinicians ranked patient self-assessments as least important in diagnostic decisions, and said that patients both over- and under-played their symptoms more often than patients reported doing so. One patient shared the common feeling of being disbelieved ...

Embargoed for release: Friday, December 15, 6:30 PM ET Key points: Using national data between 1993 and 2021, researchers observed that India’s national prevalence of child marriage—defined by the study as marriage before age 18—declined throughout the study period.  The decade between 2006 and 2016 saw the largest magnitude of reduction in child marriage, while the years between 2016 and 2021 saw the smallest. During these latter years, six Indian states/union territories saw increases in the prevalence of girl child marriage and eight saw increases in boy child marriage. The study is among the first to examine how the prevalence of child marriage ...

In a clinical trial of patients with chronic kidney disease, an experimental drug significantly reduced albuminuria — albumin in urine, a sign of kidney damage — for 50% of participants. When the experimental drug was paired with a standard-care medication, 70% of participants reportedly experienced a significant reduction in albuminuria. The findings are published today in The Lancet. The paper’s lead author is Dr. Katherine Tuttle, a clinical professor of nephrology at the University of Washington School of Medicine and executive director for research at Providence ...

HOUSTON – (Dec. 15, 2023) – Materials with enhanced thermal conductivity are critical for the development of advanced devices to support applications in communications, clean energy and aerospace. But in order to engineer materials with this property, scientists need to understand how phonons, or quantum units of the vibration of atoms, behave in a particular substance. “Phonons are quite important for studying new materials because they govern several material properties such as thermal conductivity and carrier properties,” said Fuyang Tay, a graduate student in applied physics working with the Rice ...

The National Science Foundation has awarded Lehigh University $6 million to increase the translation of scientific discoveries by faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers into prototypes, products and programs that will benefit society. The NSF’s Directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships (founded in 2022) provided the four-year award to an interdisciplinary, university-wide team led by John Coulter, senior associate dean for research in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, as part of the new federal Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program.  The award ...

Vinod Namboodiri, joint faculty member of Lehigh University’s College of Health and P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, has been awarded Phase 2 funding from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Convergence Accelerator to further develop a digital app to help persons with disabilities navigate indoor environments successfully. MABLE: Mapping for Accessibility in BuiLt Environments provides persons with disabilities independence to experience large events, conferences and educational programs. Using crowdsensing, AI and robotics, MABLE empowers individuals with responsive ...

In a first-of-its-kind study for North America, scientists accumulated a list of potential invasive species for Florida, and researchers deemed 40 pose the greatest threat. A team of experts, led by University of Florida scientists, evaluated terrestrial, aquatic and marine species with characteristics that make them particularly adept at invasion. Their list includes 460 vertebrates, invertebrates, algae and plants. “Invasive species management tends to be reactive, instead of preventative,” said Deah Lieurance, ...

Virginia Tech researchers have discovered limitations in ChatGPT’s capacity to provide location-specific information about environmental justice issues. Their findings, published in the journal Telematics and Informatics, suggest the potential for geographic biases existing in current generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. ChatGPT is a large-language model developed by OpenAI Inc., an artificial intelligence research organization. ChatGPT is designed to understand questions and generate text responses based on requests from users. The technology has a wide range of applications from content creation and information gathering to data analysis and language translation. A ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Arctic is remote, with often harsh conditions, and its climate is changing rapidly — warming four times faster than the rest of the Earth. This makes studying the Arctic climate both challenging and vital for understanding global climate change. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are using an existing fiber optic cable off Oliktok Point on the North Slope of Alaska to study the conditions of the Arctic seafloor up to 20 miles from shore. Christian Stanciu, project lead, will present their latest findings on Friday, Dec. 15 at AGU’s Fall ...