Since the laser was invented in the 1960s, scientists have been working to increase lasers’ peak power and to design machines producing coherent light at progressively shorter wavelengths that can improve image resolution and enable probing of quantum nuclear states. Progress has been made with regard to peak power, most notably with the invention of chirped pulse amplification by University of Rochester researchers in the 1980s, a breakthrough that garnered the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018. However, developing ...

A new antibiotic that works by disrupting two different cellular targets would make it 100 million times more difficult for bacteria to evolve resistance, according to new research from the University of Illinois Chicago. For a new paper in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers probed how a class of synthetic drugs called macrolones disrupt bacterial cell function to fight infectious diseases. Their experiments demonstrate that macrolones can work two different ways – either by interfering with protein production or corrupting DNA structure.  Because bacteria would need to implement ...

LA JOLLA (July 23, 2024)—Salk Professor Janelle Ayres has been selected as a 2024 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. The HHMI Investigators program awards established scientists with approximately $9 million in funding over seven years to pursue boundary-breaking research in their field. The honor recognizes her influential work in immunology and microbiology and its applications to the global crisis of antibiotic resistance. Ayres is among 26 other 2024 selectees, who will join more than 250 standing Investigators—including Salk Professors ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The National Library of Medicine has awarded Regenstrief Institute a five-year, $5 million contract extension to ensure the continued maintenance, expansion and public distribution of LOINC®, a  global standard for health terminology. The NLM issued its initial contract to support the creation and development of LOINC in 1999. With this extension, NLM's commitment to LOINC will reach 30 years by the time the award expires in 2029. “The NLM’s continued support of LOINC demonstrates the value the standard delivers to patients, care providers, health ...

Dr. Jaeyeon Pyo’s team at the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) has become the first in the world to reveal light emission patterns from 3D-printed nanowires, which has been published as a cover article in the prestigious scientific journal ACS Nano. The higher resolution in display devices signifies the more of pixels in a given screen size. As pixel density increases, movies and images are displayed with greater precision and detail. In this regard, ongoing research aims to fabricate ...

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced on July 23, 2024 that 26 of the nation’s leading scientists have been named HHMI Investigators.  Paving the way for new scientific and biomedical discoveries in fields ranging from neuroscience to immunology to structural biology, these scientists come from 19 US institutions and join HHMI’s current Investigator community, comprising more than 250 scientists.  HHMI will invest more than $300 million in this newest cohort over the next seven years, enabling each Investigator to push the boundaries of science. “HHMI is committed to supporting visionary scientists who are pursuing discoveries that will change ...

High blood pressure is known to increase a person’s chances of having a stroke. But a study led by Michigan Medicine narrows in on the cumulative effects of years of high systolic blood pressure — the top number on the blood pressure reading and how hard the heart pumps blood to the arteries — finding that a higher average reading during adulthood is linked with a greater risk for the two most common types of stroke.    The study, published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed the average systolic blood pressure years ahead of the first stroke for more than 40,000 people ...

IMDEA Software researchers Facundo Molina, Juan Manuel Copia and Alessandra Gorla present FIXCHECK, a novel approach to improve patch fix analysis that combines static analysis, randomized testing and large language models. Their innovations, embodied in the paper: "Improving Patch Correctness Analysis via Random Testing and Large Language Models" were presented at the International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2024). Context Generating patches that fix software defects is a crucial task in the maintenance of software systems. Typically, software ...

A study of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by new cars on hot summer days finds concerning levels of formaldehyde and other aldehydes. Consumers are familiar with—and even drawn to—the “new car smell” produced as VOCs from carpets, upholstery, and other interior materials in newly manufactured passenger vehicles. These VOCs can cause a range of health effects, including headaches, inflammation of the eyes, nose and throat, fatigue, irritability, dry cough, lung disease, and disorientation. Jianyin Xiong, Shaodan Huang, and colleagues sought to capture the levels of VOCs in the passenger cabins of new cars on ...

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), nicknamed ‘forever chemicals,’ pose a growing environmental and health threat. Since the invention of Teflon in 1938, PFASs and perfluorinated polymers or PFs have been widely used for their exceptional stability and resistance to water and heat. These properties made them ideal for countless applications, from cookware and clothing to firefighting foam. However, this very stability has become a major problem. PFASs do not easily break down in the environment, leading ...

Malaria remains a serious health issue globally, especially in Africa. The disease is caused by protozoan parasites in the Plasmodium genus. In 2021, there were 247 million cases of malaria and 619,000 deaths reported worldwide. At present, the first line of treatment against malaria is artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) and the administration of artemisinin derivatives in combination with other drugs. After the introduction of ACTs in Africa, which accounts for more than 90% of the world’s malaria cases, the number of deaths due to malaria greatly declined in the mid-2000s. However, Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent malaria parasite, is resistant to ACT and has been spreading ...

Nearly four decades ago, Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie launched a game-winning, mid-field touchdown pass to upset the University of Miami on the game’s final play—prompting a subsequent surge in applications to the school in what has been dubbed the “Flutie Effect.”  A team of NYU researchers has now found evidence of this effect beyond the gridiron—and athletic competition. During and after Morocco’s surprising run to the World Cup semi-finals in the fall 2022, online searches on non-sports topics related to Morocco increased ...

Data from the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s (A4) study, the first and largest clinical trial of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease, is now widely available to researchers studying the condition. The comprehensive dataset has already yielded key insights about Alzheimer’s disease, which affects nearly seven million people in the United States, and sharing the data opens avenues for further progress. A4 researchers screened more than 7,500 people and enrolled 1,169 people with pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease. This stage ...

Scientists have succeeded in pinpointing the neurons within a female fruit fly’s brain that respond to signals from the male during mating. Male fruit flies transfer a substance called a sex-peptide during mating in the seminal fluid together with sperm. This sex pheromone influences the female fly’s behaviour so she will start to lay eggs and be less inclined to mate further. This is a common phenomenon in insects but until now, it was not known where in the nervous system the neurons are located that direct ...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that an artificial intelligence (AI) model solved medical quiz questions—designed to test health professionals’ ability to diagnose patients based on clinical images and a brief text summary—with high accuracy. However, physician-graders found the AI model made mistakes when describing images and explaining how its decision-making led to the correct answer. The findings, which shed light on AI’s potential in the clinical setting, were published in npj ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Medications used by astronauts on the International Space Station might not be good enough for a three-year journey to Mars.      A new study led by Duke Health shows that over half of the medicines stocked in space -- staples such as pain relievers, antibiotics, allergy medicines, and sleep aids -- would expire before astronauts could return to Earth.     Astronauts could end up relying on ineffective or even harmful drugs, according to the study appearing July 23 in npj Microgravity, a Nature journal.      “It doesn’t necessarily mean ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Lead levels in moss are as much as 600 times higher in older Portland, Oregon, neighborhoods where lead-sheathed telecommunications cables were once used compared to lead levels in nearby rural areas, a new study of urban moss has found. The findings raise concerns about lead exposure in pre-1960 neighborhoods where the cables were common and in some cases are still in place even though they are no longer in use, said Alyssa Shiel, an environmental geochemist at Oregon State University, and the study’s ...

A new preclinical model offers a unique platform for studying the Parkinson’s disease process and suggests a relatively easy method for detecting the disease in people, according to a new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers. In the study, published July 23 in Nature Communications, the researchers showed that knocking out a key component involved in protein transportation in the light-sensing rod cells of mice leads to the retinal accumulation of the aggregates of a protein called alpha-synuclein found in patients with Parkinson’s disease. “This is a really unique model involving a pathology that seems more like human Parkinson’s than what we see in ...

A new method that can rapidly determine whether a virus is infectious or non-infectious could revolutionise the response to future pandemics.  Called FAIRY (Fluorescence Assay for vIRal IntegritY), the assay can screen viruses against virucidal antivirals in minutes, allowing for the effectiveness of antiviral measures, such as disinfectants that break the chain of infection, to be quickly determined.    Dr Samuel Jones from Birmingham’s School of Chemistry led the research team that developed the FAIRY assay.  ...

The results of the PrEPVacc HIV vaccine trial conducted in Eastern and Southern Africa, which ran between 2020 and 2024, show conclusively that neither of the two experimental vaccine regimens tested reduced HIV infections among the study population. Vaccinations in the PrEPVacc trial were stopped in November 2023 (and publicly announced in December 2023) when it became clear to independent experts monitoring the study data that there was little or no chance of the vaccines demonstrating efficacy in preventing HIV acquisition. The PrEPVacc ...

In addition to exhaust emissions, abrasion emissions from tyres and brakes have become increasingly important when assessing the environmental impact of traffic. However, the focus here was on road vehicles; rail was hardly considered. In a study commissioned by the German Centre for Rail Transport Research (DZSF), researchers from the Institute of Thermodynamics and Sustainable Propulsion Systems at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) have now been able to prove that so-called non-exhaust emissions from rail transport also have a relevant influence on air quality and soil pollution. Half of the daily particulate matter limit due to trains ...

Trees in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest are migrating in search of more favourable temperatures with species in mountain forests moving uphill to escape rising heat caused by climate change, a new study reveals. Most species in higher parts of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest are moving upwards as temperatures rise, but scientists say that those trees which thrive in colder temperatures are at risk of dying out as the world continues to warm. Researchers studying the forest, which stretches along the Brazil’s Atlantic seaboard, have also discovered that some trees in ...

Commercial arm robots are increasingly deployed in order to aid stroke patients in their recovery. Around 80% of patients have problems with their arm function. Robots are also seen as a solution for financial, and staffing, shortcomings in the healthcare sector. However, research led by Amsterdam UMC now shows that they offer no clinically meaningful effects for patients. The research is published today in Neurology.   "In particular countries such as China, Japan and South Korea, but also in North America and Europe, are UL-Robots seen more ...

Osaka, Japan — Needing a hip replacement is unfortunate, but even more unfortunate is to need to do it again. Surgeons at Osaka Metropolitan University have provided new insights into the performance of two types of stems used in total hip replacement surgery. Their findings are expected to contribute to the enhancement of long-term outcomes, improving patients’ quality of life and reducing the need for revision surgeries. Their paper was published in The Bone & Joint Journal on June 1. The hip joint, which connects the femur, or thighbone, to the pelvis, plays a crucial ...

Late-life depression, typically defined as depression with onset in individuals over 60 years of age, can affect up to a third or more of people older than 60 and can be debilitating. But, like other neurological conditions, an individual’s risk may be influenced by lifestyle choices. Researchers from Mass General Brigham previously developed and validated the Brain Care Score (BCS) for helping patients and clinicians identify lifestyle changes that may reduce their risk of dementia and stroke. Now, with collaborators at Yale University, they have shown that a higher BCS is also associated with a ...