University of Queensland researchers are calling for reforms to Australia’s environmental laws, as threatened fish species continue to be legally exported. Their work has identified four species that have been listed under Australia’s  Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act and legally exported from Australia: the orange roughy, blue warehou, school shark and southern bluefin tuna. Despite being listed as threatened under Australia’s under-review EPBC Act, UQ PhD candidate Rosa Mar Dominguez-Martinez said these fish continue to be exported. “Since the inception ...

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 8, 2024 — A research team led by the University of California, Irvine has engineered an efficient new enzyme that can produce a synthetic genetic material called threose nucleic acid. The ability to synthesize artificial chains of TNA, which is inherently more stable than DNA, advances the discovery of potentially more powerful, precise therapeutic options to treat cancer and autoimmune, metabolic and infectious diseases. A paper recently published in Nature Catalysis describes how the team created an enzyme called 10-92 that achieves ...

Rosalee Hellberg, an associate professor in Chapman University’s Food Science Program, and her research team have made a significant breakthrough in the fight against adulteration in dietary supplements. Effective methods for identifying adulteration and fraud have remained elusive. Now, a new study of 50 commercially available ginseng products has found surprising results.  Ginseng products are vulnerable to fraud, with cheaper plant materials substituted for genuine ingredients, posing risks to consumer health and safety. Using a novel combination of DNA testing techniques, the researchers detected undeclared plant species in nearly half of the 50 ginseng supplements tested. The ...

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory funding as part of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Scientific Research program. These grants will drive the development of cutting-edge AI technologies that promise to accelerate scientific discovery while preserving data privacy and improving energy efficiency. Argonne Computational Mathematician Kibaek Kim received funding for the project called Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning for Science: Building Sustainable and Trustworthy Foundation Models. This project ...

Despite considerable progress in the discovery and development of new cancer drugs, there are significant disparities in both the availability and timeliness of these medicines worldwide, with poorer countries missing out, suggests a global analysis of new drug launches between 1990 and 2022, published in the open access journal BMJ Global Health.  Few new cancer drugs were launched in lower-middle or low income countries, and the gap between rich and poor nations widened over the three decades, the analysis shows. Such inequities may help explain poor cancer outcomes in many countries, particularly those ...

Waiting more than 4 hours in emergency care for treatment is linked to heightened risks of death and a longer hospital stay for hip fracture patients, reveals a single centre study, published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.   The waiting time for more than 1 in 3 of these patients exceeded the 4 hour national standard, which now requires that 76% of emergency department patients must either be discharged or admitted to hospital within that time frame.  By the age of 80 an estimated third of women and 17% of men will have ...

A change in policy may be helping to drive a rise in treatment-resistant vaginal thrush, amid  significant yearly increases in the prevalence of fungal infections caused by fungal Candida species, suggests the first study of its kind, published online in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.   While the exact reasons for these trends aren’t yet clear, they follow a shift in clinical practice, with the aim of reducing laboratory workload, say the researchers. Family doctors in primary care are now encouraged to treat vaginal thrush empirically—on signs and symptoms alone, rather than on confirmatory lab test results. Vaginal thrush is ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL 23:30 UK TIME TUESDAY 8 OCTOBER 2024 Peer-reviewed / Data analysis / People  Heat stress may still affect babies once born, first evidence suggests Exposure to high levels of heat may both impact the growth of foetuses during pregnancy and infants up to the age of two, a new analysis suggests. The study is the first of its kind to show that heat stress may impact the development of babies after they’re born and adds to previous research by the team showing the impact of heat stress on foetal development. The research, which examined data from infants and their mothers collected during a clinical trial in ...

Stressed bees are much more likely to make pessimistic choices and lack a buzz in life, new research has revealed. Scientists at Newcastle University, UK, have found that bumblebees have a response to an adverse event resembling human emotions. Findings, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, show bees reduce their expectations of reward when they are agitated, and this could impact how they approach and pollinate flowers. High and low rewards Researchers trained bees to decide about whether a colour signalled something good or bad. Bees learned to identify ...

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 8, 2024 — Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other international institutions have for the first time achieved atomic-scale observations of grain rotation in polycrystalline materials. Widely used in electronic devices, aerospace technologies, automotive applications and solar energy systems, these substances have long been studied for their unique properties and structural dynamics. Using state-of-the-art microscopy tools housed in the UC Irvine Materials Research Institute, scientists were able to heat samples of platinum nanocrystalline thin films and observe the mechanism driving grain rotation in unprecedented ...

Is it possible to study the production of blood and immune cells inside the bone marrow? For the first time ever, the answer is yes, thanks to a new approach pioneered by USC Stem Cell scientist Rong Lu and Caltech synthetic biologist Michael B. Elowitz, together with co-investigators Carlos Lois and Lior Pachter at Caltech. The new approach will enable the scientists to study the blood-producing stem and progenitor cells, also called hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), within the difficult-to-access ...

Heterocyclic molecules are crucial in the pharmaceutical and materials science industries due to their diverse applications. Nitrogen-containing heterocycles have garnered significant interest for their versatility across various fields. Recent research highlights their importance, making the synthesis of N-heterocycles a key focus in synthetic chemistry, driven by their wide-ranging potential. A recent review published in Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry highlights major advancements in the synthesis of nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds using microwave-assisted methods. This efficient technique, applicable to both non-catalytic and catalytic ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- When creating new materials for our modern needs, materials science engineers face a basic problem: Designing it to be strong when faced with loads in one direction may lead to structural weaknesses when facing stress from a different direction. Binghamton University, State University of New York Assistant Professors Mir Jalil Razavi and Dehao Liu want to develop a solution using artificial intelligence and machine learning to suggest unique types of composite materials that meet specific mechanical behavior requirements. “When we look at materials now, we usually tune mechanical properties in one ...

New INFORMS Journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Study Key Takeaways: As Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries become sicker, health plans spend disproportionately less on their care relative to the payments received, with evidence suggesting this is partially due to illegal strategic cross-subsidization. For each one-point increase in a patient’s risk score, their annual “spending-cost difference” (the gap between what MA plans spend on a patient vs. what they receive in payments) decreases by more than $9,000. Strategic cross-subsidization could exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities in healthcare access and outcomes. Rigorous oversight ...

(New York, NY, Oct. 8, 2024) – New York City-based biotechnology company Applied Biological Laboratories has been selected to present research and data from a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial of Biovanta and research on pipeline products at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Clinical Virology Symposium in Long Beach, California on October 8, 2024. Applied Bio is part of NYU Biolabs, a collaborative research facility and biotech incubator affiliated with New York University’s Langone Medical Center. Biovanta is the company’s line of over ...

The role of universities in the fight for a fairer and more sustainable planet is increasingly significant. A team of researchers from ESPOL decided to examine how academia contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by analyzing scientific publications on a global scale. Using tools such as ArcGIS, Biblioshiny, R, and VOSviewer, they conducted an in-depth review of scientific databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, tracking hundreds of articles addressing topics related to service-learning and community engagement. The results show a positive trend in scientific production on these topics, with a notable growth since 2009 and a peak in publications through 2022. ...

Researchers at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science were recently awarded $2.8 million of a $5.8 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office to support a groundbreaking four-year project aimed at developing best practices for decision-ready climate projection information. This work will address increased demand by public and private sectors for reliable, long-term extreme weather climate information. This initiative, led by the Rosenstiel School and including partners from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Colorado State University, and Florida International ...

Researchers from Western University, Stockton University, and University of Massachusetts Amherst published a new Journal of Marketing article that examines if firms benefit from adopting popular nicknames in their branding efforts.  The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “BMW is Powerful, Beemer is Not: Nickname Branding Impairs Brand Performance” and is authored by Zhe Zhang, Ning Ye, and Matthew Thomson.  Many brands have popular nicknames that have become a part of ...

The expectations humans have of a pleasurable sensation asymmetrically shape neuronal responses and subjective experiences to hot sauce, according to a study published October 8th, in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Yi Luo from East China Normal University, Kenneth Kishida from Wake Forest School of Medicine, U.S., and colleagues. Expectations shape our perception, profoundly influencing how we interpret the world. Positive expectations about sensory stimuli can alleviate distress and reduce pain through what’s ...

In a rare, longitudinal study, researchers from Aalto University and the University of Oulu tracked one person’s brain and behavioral activity for five months using brain scans and data from wearable devices and smartphones.  ‘We wanted to go beyond isolated events,’ says research leader Ana Triana. ‘Our behaviour and mental states are constantly shaped by our environment and experiences. Yet, we know little about the response of brain functional connectivity to environmental, physiological, and behavioral changes on different ...

LA JOLLA (October 8, 2024)—The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected Salk Associate Professor Nicola Allen to receive a 2024 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. The award recognizes exceptionally creative scientists pursuing highly innovative research and groundbreaking approaches to major challenges in biomedical, behavioral, or social sciences. Allen will receive $3.5 million over five years to support her latest research, which investigates how plasticity in the adult brain could be enhanced. ...

Proteins control most of the body’s functions, and their malfunction can have severe consequences, such as neurodegenerative diseases or cancer. Therefore, cells have mechanisms in place to control protein quality. In animal and human cells, chaperones of the Hsp70 class are at the heart of this control system, overseeing a wide array of biological processes. Yet, despite their crucial role, the precise molecular mechanism of Hsp70 chaperones has remained elusive for decades. Using a cutting-edge nanopore single-molecule technique, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with EPFL, has now made a significant breakthrough in determining how Hsp70 chaperones ...

DataSeer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are pleased to announce two new pilot programs designed to support high-quality reporting across scientific disciplines. The first will generate pre-filled MDAR reports for authors – saving them time and boosting the quality of methods reporting – for AAAS’ flagship journal Science. The second will establish an Open Science Indicators baseline dataset, quantifying how and when authors at Science share their ...

Students don’t have to be friends, but they should be friendly. In other words, they should learn to be respectful of one another while sharing the same space. For Chad Rose, a nationally renowned bullying prevention expert at the University of Missouri, this idea is central to his efforts to reduce school bullying, and in turn, school violence. Bullying is a risk factor for violence, said Rose, the director of Mizzou’s Bully Prevention Lab who has spent the past 18 years researching the subject. “After the Safe Schools initiative was launched in 1999 by the U.S. Department of Education, we began to see that children and teens who have experienced prolonged ...

Researchers at Concordia have developed a novel method of 3D printing that uses acoustic holograms. And they say it’s quicker than existing methods and capable of making more complex objects. The process, called holographic direct sound printing (HDSP), is described in a recent article in the journal Nature Communications. It builds on a method introduced in 2022 that described how sonochemical reactions in microscopic cavitations regions — tiny bubbles — create extremely high temperatures and pressure for trillionths of a second to harden resin into complex ...