Abu Dhabi, UAE, October 2023: A team of scientists, led by Post-Doctoral Associate Marieh Al-Handawi and Professor of Chemistry Panče Naumov from NYU Abu Dhabi’s Smart Materials Lab and NYU Abu Dhabi Institute’s Center for Smart Engineering Materials (CSEM) has revealed the mechanism a desert plant native to the United Arab Emirates uses to capture moisture from the desert air in order to survive. The identification of this unique mechanism, in which the plant excretes salts to extract and condense water onto the surface of its leaves, has the potential to inspire ...

The Royal Canadian Institute for Science (RCIScience) awards the 2023 Sandford Fleming Medal for Excellence in Science Communication to independent science writer Terry Collins and the William Edmond Logan Award to the team behind CBC Radio's national weekly science program, Quirks & Quarks. A knowledge translator for over 27 years, Terry Collins' reporting has been picked up by journalists in Canada and worldwide, awakening public interest in and deepening understanding of diverse sciences, fostering political will and mobilizing resources for change.  Nominator Dr. Peter A. Singer, former Special Advisor to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, ...

SEATTLE – Leroy Hood, MD, PhD, co-founder of Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and a pioneer in systems biology, and Rebecca Lambert, founder and CEO of NED Biosystems, Inc. (NED), a public benefit corporation that is developing the first oral “systems treatment” for cancer, have entered into a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a clinical trial to show how cancer’s onset may be reversed. NED’s cancer treatment, NED-170, takes a systems approach that combines repurposed, oral agents that are well documented in humans to affect critical cancer disease-driver processes at doses that lack customary toxicity and side effects. “A ...

Around 11,500 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC tracks cervical cancer rates by age, race, and ethnicity, but not by disability type. A 2022 study found that women with disabilities may encounter multiple social and economic barriers to accessing reproductive health care, and a lack of timely access to cervical cancer screening may lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment for cervical cancer.   According to research by Mason PhD in Public Health ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $11.4 million for six projects in quantum information science (QIS) with relevance to fusion and plasma science. The Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program supports fundamental research to expand the understanding of matter at very high temperatures and densities and to build the scientific foundation needed to develop a fusion energy source. The QIS portfolio within FES supports research opportunities outlined in the 2018 Fusion Energy Sciences Roundtable on Quantum Information Science report. It includes science and technology thrusts where QIS might have a transformative impact on FES ...

A team of scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology will expand its work after receiving a large grant from the National Science Foundation to make chemistry more accessible for students who rely on American Sign Language interpreters in class. Christina Goudreau Collison, professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science; Jennifer Swartzenberg, senior lecturer in the National Technical Institute for the Deaf’s Department of Science and Mathematics; Lea Michel, professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science; and Pepsi Holmquist, visiting assistant professor in NTID’s Department of Science and Mathematics, have been awarded nearly $380,000 ...

While there are a number of studies demonstrating that dog therapy programs can improve a person’s social and emotional wellbeing, many typically have a disproportionate number of female participants. Recent research led by Dr. John-Tyler Binfet, an Associate Professor in UBC Okanagan’s School of Education and Director of Building Academic Retention through K9s (BARK), evaluated if there are gender differences in wellbeing by setting up separate dog therapy sessions for those who identified as female, male and gender diverse participants. Dr. Binfet has conducted numerous studies on the benefits of canine therapy, but to his knowledge, ...

Improving treatments for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive tumor with very poor prognosis and limited therapeutic targets, has been challenging. Responding to this need for better treatments, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions have investigated potential vulnerabilities in TNBC that could lead to novel therapies and improved outcomes for this devastating condition. The team reports in The Journal of Clinical Investigation that in diverse TNBC animal models, targeting protein eIF4A with the ...

Rett syndrome is a rare devastating neurological disorder that primarily affects young girls and manifests as an impaired ability to walk and talk, along with characteristic ‘hand-wringing’ movements, seizures, and cognitive disability. This incurable condition results from mutations in the methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MECP2) gene that impairs the role of the MeCP2 protein in regulating the activity of many genes in brain cells. A new MECP2 gene variant (G118E) was recently characterized by a research team led by Dr. Huda Zoghbi, a distinguished service professor at Baylor College of Medicine and the founding director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological ...

WASHINGTON—Optica Publishing Group today published the first issue of its newest peer-reviewed, Gold Open Access journal, Optica Quantum.  Optica Quantum joins Optica Publishing Group’s diverse portfolio of 19 peer-reviewed journals and provides a home for high-impact research in quantum information science and technology (QIST), enabled by optics and photonics. Editor-in-Chief Michael G. Raymer of the University of Oregon, USA, leads the editorial board, comprised of outstanding researchers from around the world who are active in quantum science and technology. “Discoveries in QIST have the potential to change the world ...

Brigham Young University researcher Jeff Bednar is now a part-time ghost hunter. And while the business professor doesn’t have night vision cameras or ultrasensitive recording equipment, he’s found a bunch of ghosts — including several on his own campus. The ghosts Bednar and University of Illinois colleague Jacob Brown are hunting sound similar to the ghosts you’ve heard of — they linger long after they’ve left this life and hover over their previous haunts — but they’re not necessarily the kind of ghosts that show up around Halloween. They’re called organizational ghosts: admired former ...

UC, UC Health mark 10 years as NIH StrokeNet National Coordinating Center, celebrate competitive renewal for next 5 years Cincinnati, OH (Monday, Oct. 30, 2023) – The University of Cincinnati and UC Health have been renewed as the National Coordinating Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) StrokeNet, which is the primary infrastructure for multicenter trials of stroke funded by NIH and the pipeline for new potential treatments for adults and children with stroke and those at risk for stroke. Created in 2013, NIH StrokeNet ...

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Hellenic Society of Cardiology have teamed up to host the ACC Middle East & Eastern Mediterranean 2023 conference. The annual forum kicks off on November 3 – 5 in Athens, Greece, and puts the spotlight on the latest in cardiovascular prevention. Global experts will converge for an innovative educational experience to discuss best practices for improving the heart health of patients with cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world. There are an estimated 11 million new cases of heart disease in Europe each year, while cardiovascular diseases are responsible for one-third of ...

INDIANAPOLIS—Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have identified multiple species of bacteria that, when present in the gut, are linked to an increased risk of developing severe malaria in humans and mice. Their findings, recently published in Nature Communications, could lead to the development of new approaches targeting gut bacteria to prevent severe malaria and associated deaths. Malaria is a life-threatening infectious disease caused by parasites transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes. According to the World Health Organization’s latest World Malaria Report, an estimated 619,000 people died from malaria ...

Marmar Moussa, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer science professor at the University of Oklahoma, has secured a nearly $1 million award from the National Institutes of Health to advance her work in computational genomics. The study, titled “Computational approaches to the mechanistic elucidation of the serrated pathway of human colon carcinogenesis,” aims to unravel the mechanisms driving the serrated pathway of human colon carcinogenesis using computational methods that help explain how colon cancer develops. “This research is ...

A new approach to valuing the carbon storage potential of natural habitats aims to help restore faith in offset schemes, by enabling investors to directly compare carbon credit pricing across a wide range of projects. Current valuation methods for forest conservation projects have come under heavy scrutiny, leading to a crisis of confidence in carbon markets. This is hampering efforts to offset unavoidable carbon footprints, mitigate climate change, and scale up urgently needed investment in tropical forest conservation. Measuring the value of carbon storage is not easy. Recent research revealed that as little as 6% of carbon credits ...

**CORRECTION** We have identified an error in this press release. The fifth paragraph of the release originally read: The researchers warn that if carbon dioxide emissions remain at 2022 levels of about 40 billion gigatonnes per year, the carbon budget will be exhausted by around 2029, committing the world to warming of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. However, this should read: The researchers warn that if carbon dioxide emissions remain at 2022 levels of about 40 gigatonnes per year, the carbon budget will be exhausted ...

Why all languages have words for ‘this’ and ‘that’ Languages around the world have words for ‘this’ and ‘that’ according to new research from an international team, led by the University of East Anglia. Researchers studied more than 1,000 speakers of 29 different languages to see how they use demonstratives – words that show where something is in relation to a person talking such as ‘this cat’ or ‘that dog’. It was previously thought that languages vary in the spatial distinctions they make - and that speakers of different languages may think in fundamentally different ...

The nutrients available from seafood could drop by 30 per cent for low-income countries by the end of the century due to climate change, suggests new UBC research. That’s in a high carbon emissions and low mitigation scenario, according to the study published today in Nature Climate Change. This could be reduced to a roughly 10 per cent decline if the world were to meet the Paris Agreement targets of limiting global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius - which recent reports have shown we’re not on track to achieve. “Low-income countries and the global south, ...

Pei Dong, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, received $250,000 from the U.S. Department of the Interior for the project: "Engineering Spatial Wood Carbon Scaffolds with Nanocellulose Fillers for Water Deionization." This funding began in Sept. 2023 and will end in Sept. 2025. This project seeks to create an innovative and energy-efficient capacitive deionization process with the help of biomass-based advanced porous structures for water desalination and purification.  ### About George Mason University George Mason University is Virginia's largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 38,000 students from 130 countries ...

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau, Assistant Professor, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences (AOES), received funding for the project: "Geochemical Analysis of Carboniferous Carbonates and Implications for Ocean Oxygenation."   He and his collaborators aim to generate a new composite carbon record through the lower Mississippian in the Williston Basin. They also aim to generate a new record that tests the hypothesis that carbon excursion was related to an expansion of global ocean anoxia, ...

Russell Studying Black Displacement & Mobility In Arlington County Donald Russell, Director, Provisions Research Center for Art & Social Change, Director, Mason Exhibitions, University Curator, College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA), received funding for the project: "Black Displacement and Mobility in Arlington County." The goal of the project is to create a database of researched information that evidences Black displacement, migration, mobility, and the legacy of the Black diaspora that remains today in Arlington County.  The database will consist of maps, ...

Scientists have discovered a new species of mosasaur, large, carnivorous aquatic lizards that lived during the late Cretaceous. With “transitional” traits that place it between two well-known mosasaurs, the new species is named after a sea serpent in Norse mythology, Jormungandr, and the small North Dakota city Walhalla near to where the fossil was found. Details describing Jǫrmungandr walhallaensis are published today in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.  “If you put flippers on a Komodo dragon and made it really big, that’s basically what it would have looked like,” said the study’s lead ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Emily Burchfield, Emory assistant professor of environmental sciences, $1.6 million to lead efforts to identify emerging pressures on agriculture in Georgia, Iowa and Ohio and to develop predictive models to help farmers and policymakers weather these changes. “In a nutshell, we’re trying to understand what climate change will mean for agriculture in these three states,” Burchfield says. “We’ll be integrating biophysical projections based on environmental data with insights ...

University of Cincinnati Cancer Center researchers found a seed device that acts as a GPS for surgeons to locate and remove breast and lymph node tumors was safe and effective.  The feasibility study evaluating the use of the devices, called SmartClips, was recently published in the journal The American Surgeon.  UC’s Jaime Lewis and her colleague Elizabeth Shaughnessy helped test the SmartClip devices as they were being developed.  “We went a few times and saw the different prototypes, worked with them, and provided feedback. ...