Robot-assisted heart surgery usually requires an assistant at the operating table to help the surgeon insert the robot arm through a small incision. The assistant has to constantly make sure the surgeon has enough room to operate via the robot arm. For greater independence on the surgeon’s side, an Osaka Metropolitan University-led group has developed a device that can secure the surgical field. Graduate School of Medicine Professor Toshihiko Shibata and Associate Professor Yosuke Takahashi worked with colleagues and small and ...

As bird populations dwindle across the globe, a new study from University of Vermont researchers suggests some species may be more flexible to habitat changes than previously understood, creating new opportunities for supporting populations through city planting efforts. The team’s findings were published in the Journal of Animal Ecology today. While studies have found bird populations are on the decline—Canada and the United States have lost nearly three billion birds over the last half century—measuring ...

Event Date: 15 November 2024 to 17 November 2024 Time: 9:00am - 6:30pm Venue: Main Hall, Shaw Auditorium, HKUST   INTRODUCTION The Molecular Frontiers Symposium, organized by the globally renowned Molecular Frontiers Foundation - founded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences - is recognized as one of the most influential scientific organizations worldwide. For the first time in the organization’s history, the Foundation's annual flagship symposium will be held in Greater China, hosted at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. With the theme "Frontiers of New Knowledge in Science", the Symposium ...

“How is plant growth controlled?” and “What is the basis of variation in stress tolerance in plants?” were among the 125 most challenging scientific questions, according to the journal Science in 2016. Strigolactone (SL) is an important plant hormone that plays essential roles in regulating branch number, a key growth and development trait for plants. Recently, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have uncovered the mechanism behind SL perception and its key role in the tillering response to nitrogen. The “gas and brake” mechanism of SL perception allows “smart and flexible” regulation of the duration ...

Niigata, Japan - A new nationwide study from Japan spanning a 14 year study period has revealed an increasing trend of overweight and obesity in patients with the incident end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). Although, underweight individuals remain prevalent in this patient population, the study highlights that excessive weight and obesity in patients with the incident ESKD is a shared global challenge. Consequently, the study suggests the need for public health strategies to address the global obesity epidemic as well as underweight individuals in incident ESKD populations. “The global ...

Adding small amounts of exercise into daily routine, such as climbing stairs or cycling to the shops, could help to reduce blood pressure, with just five additional minutes a day estimated to yield improvements, finds a new study from researchers at UCL and the University of Sydney. The study, supported by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and published in Circulation, analysed health data from 14,761 volunteers who wore activity trackers to explore the relationship between daily movement and blood pressure. The researchers split daily activity into six behaviours1: Sleep Sedentary behaviour (such as sitting) Slow walking (cadence ...

New research suggests that adding a small amount of physical activity – such as uphill walking or stair-climbing – into your day may help to lower blood pressure.   The study, published in Circulation, was carried out by experts from the ProPASS (Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep) Consortium, an international academic collaboration led by the University of Sydney and University College London (UCL).   Just five minutes of activity a day was estimated to potentially reduce blood pressure, while replacing ...

Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are fuelling unrealistic, unhealthy obsessions with a lean and muscular physique among many young men, according to a new Australian study. Men who place higher importance on receiving likes and positive comments on their posts are significantly more likely to experience symptoms of what is termed “muscle dysmorphia” (MD) – a belief that their bodies are small and weak, even though many of them have a good physique. In an online survey of almost 100 men, aged between 18-34, all admitted to viewing celebrity, fashion, and fitness content on social media sites, but the link with MD was only significant when it came to ...

The U.S. Army has awarded a team of researchers led by Judith Su, University of Arizona associate professor of biomedical engineering and optical sciences, $2.1 million to build a handheld version of her record-breaking FLOWER sensing device for active military personnel. The device picks up target compounds at zeptomolar (10 to the power of negative 21) concentrations, an astonishingly minuscule amount of 600 particles per liter. FLOWER is useful for drug testing and a wide variety of other applications, such as health diagnostics.  The military ...

Key takeaways Higher temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change turned an ordinary drought into an exceptional one that parched the American West from 2020–2022.  A study by UCLA and NOAA scientists has found that evaporation accounted for 61% of the drought’s severity, while reduced precipitation accounted for 39%.  The research found that since 2000, evaporative demand has played a bigger role than reduced precipitation in droughts, which may become more severe ...

New research into the vulnerability of power grids served by weather-dependent renewable energy sources (WD-RESs) such as solar and wind paints a hopeful picture as various countries around the globe attempt to meet their climate emissions targets – with the research showing grids with high penetration of WD-RESs tend to have reduced blackout intensities in the US. This research – just published in leading international journal Nature Energy – was conducted with US blackout data from 2001 to 2020, but the results are of great interest from the perspective of any country transitioning to power grids primarily ...

UPTON, N.Y. — Nuclear physics theorists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have demonstrated that complex calculations run on supercomputers can accurately predict the distribution of electric charges in mesons, particles made of a quark and an antiquark. Scientists are keen to learn more about mesons — and the whole class of particles made of quarks, collectively known as hadrons — in high-energy experiments at the future Electron-Ion ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Uterine fibroids are a common condition that affects up to 80% of women in their lifetime. Nearly half of those women will experience symptoms that affect their quality of life and fertility, including severe pain and anemia. Uterine fibroids are the major reason for the removal of the uterus by hysterectomy. However, Mayo Clinic researchers recommend minimally invasive treatment alternatives to hysterectomy, in an invited clinical practice paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "Less invasive ...

Using a fan and wetting the skin reduces risk of deadly cardiac strain in hot and humid weather  But older people should avoid using fans in very hot and dry conditions    New collaborative research from the University of Sydney and the Montreal Heart Institute has shown that using a fan in hot and humid weather reduces cardiac strain in older people, contradicting recommendations from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in the US.   The study, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) ...

Clinics and hospitals currently defer medication abortion until ultrasound confirms a pregnancy inside the uterus. However, a large international study led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet now indicates that treatment can be equally effective and safe even before the sixth week of pregnancy. The study is published in The New England Journal of Medicine. 35,550 abortions took place in Sweden in 2023, over 60 per cent of them before the end of the seventh week of pregnancy. Often, the procedure is held off until intrauterine pregnancy is confirmed by vaginal ultrasound to rule out the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy, in which the embryo attaches ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – Older people who are sleepy during the day or lack enthusiasm for activities due to sleep issues may be more likely to develop a syndrome that can lead to dementia, according to a study published in the November 6, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. People with the syndrome have a slow walking speed and say they have some memory issues, although they do not have a mobility disability or dementia. Called motoric cognitive risk ...

Christopher D. Anderson, MD, MSc, chief of the Division of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate neurologist in the Department of Neurology and Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the corresponding author and Jonathan Rosand, MD, MSc, co-founder of the McCance Center for Brain Health and neurologist in the Department of Neurology and Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is an author of a paper published on November 6, 2024, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, “Health-related behaviors ...

Sexual orientation—dictated by factors like sexual identity, attraction and behavior—is challenging to measure comprehensively. This is reflected in variations in the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people recorded across surveys using different measurement approaches. Most approaches focus on ‘sexual identity’ to understand mental health disparities, but differences in perceived notions of ‘identity’ and ‘attraction/behavior’ are prevalent. For instance, some ...

A study conducted at the Center for Research on Redox Processes in Biomedicine (Redoxoma) helps understand how high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), one of the manifestations of diabetes, can cause thrombosis. The findings, reported in an article published in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, can contribute to the development of strategies to prevent cardiovascular dysfunction in diabetics. “The leading causes of death in Brazil and several other Latin American countries ...

Maintaining good health and well-being is crucial for how well patients respond to cancer treatments. Unfortunately, cachexia, or involuntary weight loss, is a major concern for many individuals with advanced cancer. A new study from Japan has revealed that lower cachexia rates, particularly with prevalence less than 40–50%, are linked to shorter overall survival (OS) rates. The study also showed that the diagnostic criteria used for cachexia detection can affect the reported cachexia prevalence. People with advanced heart disease or cancer often face serious health challenges. Cachexia, an involuntary loss ...

Safety is not only for truck drivers, but also the drivers around them. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute recently received nearly $1 million in two grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to develop and enhance tractor-trailer educational programs. “These two grants will allow us to continue transforming our research into practice,” said Rich Hanowski, director of the institute's division of freight, transit, and heavy vehicle safety. “The outreach initiatives will directly leave an impact on drivers ...

Waterborne diseases affect over 7 million people in the U.S. every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and cost our health care system over $3 billion. But they don’t impact all people equally. A campuswide collaboration is using sewage surveillance as a vital strategy in the fight against diseases that spread through the water such as legionella and shigella. The ones that are most difficult to combat are diseases with antimicrobial resistance, which means they are able to survive against antibiotics that are intended to kill them. A recent paper in Nature Water offers an encouraging insight: Monitoring ...

The natural environment across the globe is deteriorating, leading to crises like climate change, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity. Companies and industries play a major role in this decline, and they are expected to take responsibility for their environmental impact. A recent study by Probal Dutta from the University of Vaasa, Finland, suggests that companies can meet these expectations by openly sharing reliable, credible information about their activities, environmental performance, and effects on nature. Probal Dutta’s doctoral dissertation at the University ...

A groundbreaking study from Queen Mary University of London reveals that the music and soundscapes used in toy commercials are reinforcing rigid gender norms, shaping the way children perceive masculinity and femininity. The research uncovers how gender stereotypes are not only conveyed through visuals and language but are also deeply embedded in the sound and music used in advertisements targeted at children.  For more than 40 years, research has shown how gender polarisation in children’s ...

Wastewater treatment fails to kill several human pathogens when they hide out on microplastics in the water, reports a new study led by Ingun Lund Witsø of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, published November 6, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Wastewater treatment plants are designed to remove contaminants from wastewater, but microplastics persist and can become colonized by a sticky microbial biofilm. Previous research has suggested that these microbial communities, called plastispheres, include potential pathogens, and thus might pose a risk to human health and the environment when treated wastewater and sludge are released. In the new study, researchers ...