Evolutionary biologists have for the first time decoded the genetic lineage of a famous killer whale and a pod that once worked alongside whale hunters off the coast of New South Wales. In the Australian tradition of claiming New Zealand’s celebrities as its own, Old Tom, the leader of a pod of killer whales that famously helped whalers hunt baleen whales in the 20th century, has ancestral links to modern-day killer whales in New Zealand, according to new DNA research. Old Tom also shared a common ancestor with killer whales from Australasia, the North Pacific, and North Atlantic Oceans, but is most similar to modern New Zealand killer whales. However, most of Tom’s ...

Love songs are at least as popular in the animal kingdom as on the radio. The importance of musically serenading your true love has driven plotlines from Twelfth Night to The Trumpet of the Swan to Happy Feet.  The latest exploration of music in the natural world is taking place in Mala Murthy’s lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, where Murthy and her research group have used neural imaging, optogenetics, motion capture, modeling and artificial intelligence to pinpoint precisely where and how a fruit fly’s brain toggles between its standard solo and its mating serenade. Their research ...

PHILADELPHIA -- New research published by a team at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania finds that experiencing days in which the temperature exceeds previous highs for that time of year affects people’s perception of weather trends. Published in Scientific Reports, the study “Record-breaking Heat Days Disproportionately Influence Heat Perceptions” finds that living in an area with record-breaking heat effectively increases perceptions that the weather is getting hotter. The research was co-authored by economist Timothy Hyde, a postdoctoral fellow in APPC’s Science of Science Communication Division, and psychologist and communication ...

  Aston University professor named in international Top 100 of Photonics Professor Igor Meglinski’s research overlaps engineering and health sciences He applies his photonics knowledge to develop methods to detect diseases such as dementia and cancer.   An Aston University professor has been named in an international Top 100 of Photonics key players.   Igor Meglinski, professor in quantum bio-photonics and biomedical engineering was elected by fellow experts as one of the Top 100 in the field of photonics – the science and technology of light.   Although he is based in the College ...

A novel biomaterial developed at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) in Brazil can help solve two problems at once. As a bioparticle, it can act as a drug carrier, delivering medication directly to the gastrointestinal tract of fish in order to circumvent resistance to conventional antibiotics, for example. In addition, it is administered orally in powder form and is highly palatable to fish, increasing the probability of effective treatment while at the same time reducing the waste ...

INDIANAPOLIS—A new $15.4 million grant will help Indiana University School of Medicine recruit and educate medical students to better care for underserved populations, in hopes of improving health care across Indiana. The Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) grant will provide about $4 million over four years to the Indiana Primary Care Advancement in Clinical Training (INPACT) program. The goal of the program is to recruit more students from medically underserved areas of the state and provide doctors with the tools ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Aerovy, a Purdue University-connected startup, has completed a round of funding and is expanding industry partnerships around the world. Aerovy develops cloud-based software solutions for the advanced air mobility, or AAM, sector, which includes electric-powered urban and regional aircraft. CEO Nick Gunady said Aerovy has closed its round of pre-seed funding, raising $800,000 from Purdue Innovates, M25 and the Flywheel Fund. “The closing of the pre-seed round represents a critical milestone in our missions to unlock the energy ...

Absorption spectroscopy is an analytical chemistry tool that can determine if a particular substance is present in a sample by measuring the intensity of the light absorbed as a function of wavelength. Measuring the absorbance of an atom or molecule can provide important information about electronic structure, quantum state, sample concentration, phase changes or composition changes, among other variables, including interaction with other molecules and possible technological applications. Molecules with a high probability of simultaneously absorbing ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 11, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Nicholas Mueschke has been named an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). AIAA Associate Fellows are recognized for overseeing important engineering or scientific work and outstanding contributions to their field. Associate Fellows must be recommended by at least three other associate fellows, be a senior member in good standing of the AIAA and have at least 12 years of professional experience. AIAA selects only one Associate Fellow for each 150 members each year. The AIAA selected Mueschke for ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 11, 2023 — The rapid transition to virtual care that occurred with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in better continuity of psychotherapy visits compared to prior to the pandemic when almost all visits were in-person, according to new research published in Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association.  In addition, the time between appointments grew shorter after the transition to virtual care. The study results highlight the benefits of continued availability of virtual psychotherapy.   This ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Yes, Scientists Have Sequenced the Entire Human Genome, But They’re Not Done Yet The human genome, from end to end, has been sequenced, meaning scientists worldwide have identified most of the nearly 20,000 protein-coding genes. However, an international group of scientists notes there’s more work to be done. The scientists point out that even though we have nearly converged on the identities of the 20,000 genes, the genes can be cut and spliced to create approximately 100,000 proteins, and gene experts are far from agreement on what those 100,000 proteins are. The group, which convened last fall at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, has now ...

New York, NY [October 11, 2023]—Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the University of California San Diego have been awarded an $8.5 million grant to create a data integration hub aimed at accelerating novel therapeutics and cures for diseases within initiatives supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund. NIH Common Fund programs are large-scale projects designed to collect cutting-edge biomedical research data from human cells, tissues, and patients to rapidly ...

Wine quality is notorious for varying from year to year, but what makes for a “good year”? In a paper publishing October 11 in the journal iScience, researchers show that weather plays an important role in determining wine quality. By analyzing 50 years’ worth of wine critic scores from the Bordeaux wine region in relation to that year’s weather, the researchers showed that higher quality wine is made in years with warmer temperatures, higher winter rainfall, and earlier, shorter ...

High Mountain Asia (HMA), encompassing the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalayan ranges, harbors the world's third-largest amount of glacial ice. It is the source of more than 10 major Asian rivers and vital water resources for nearly 2 billion people. Recent decades have witnessed a dipolar trend in HMA precipitation, characterized by an increase in the north but a decrease in the southeast. These changes have significant implications for water resource security and ecological equilibrium in both local ...

The study, published today in Nature, reports the sighting of two ice giant exoplanets colliding around a sun-like star, creating a blaze of light and plumes of dust. Its findings show the bright heat afterglow and resulting dust cloud, which moved in front of the parent star dimming it over time. The international team of astronomers was formed after an enthusiast viewed the light curve of the star and noticed something strange. It showed the system doubled in brightness at infrared wavelengths some three years before the star started to fade in visible light. Co-lead author Dr Matthew Kenworthy, from Leiden University, ...

People with early Alzheimer’s disease have difficulty turning when walking, according to a new study using virtual reality led by UCL researchers. The study, published in Current Biology, used a computational model to further explore the intricacies of navigational errors previously observed in Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers, led by Professor Neil Burgess and colleagues in the Space and Memory group* at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, grouped participants into three categories: healthy younger participants (31 total), healthy elderly participants (36 total) and patients with mild cognitive impairment (43 total). They then asked ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of nearly 13,000 veterans with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer suggest that differences in outcomes by race and ethnicity exist. In addition, Black and Hispanic men may have considerably improved outcomes when treated in an equal-access setting.  Authors: Kelli M. Rasmussen, M.S., of the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.37272) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

About The Study: Survivors of adolescent and young adult cancer had high rates of perceiving increased infertility risk but frequently overestimated or underestimated their risk in this study that included 785 participants. These findings suggest that counseling on infertility risk throughout survivorship may reduce misalignment between perceptions and actual risk, decrease fertility-related psychological distress, and inform family planning decisions.  Authors: H. Irene Su, M.D., M.S.C.E., ...

Researchers have developed a method that can reveal the location of errors in quantum computers, making them up to ten times easier to correct. This will significantly accelerate progress towards large-scale quantum computers capable of tackling the world’s most challenging computational problems, the researchers said. Led by Princeton University’s Jeff Thompson, the team demonstrated a way to identify when errors occur in quantum computers more easily than ever before. This is a new direction for research ...

PHILADELPHIA – Women and those from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in medicine (URiM) not only occupy few leadership roles in surgical departments but also tend to be clustered into certain leadership roles, according to a new analysis led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. These clusters of roles include vice chairs of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or wellness, where the promotion path to department chair is unclear. The report was published today in JAMA Surgery and led by ...

At a glance: New AI tool called EVEscape uses evolutionary and biological information to predict how a virus could change to escape the immune system.   The tool successfully predicted the most concerning new variants that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers say the tool can help inform the development of vaccines and therapies for SARS-CoV-2 and other rapidly mutating viruses. The COVID-19 pandemic seemed like a never-ending parade of SARS-CoV-2 variants, each equipped with new ways to evade the immune system, leaving the world bracing for what would come next. But what if there were a way to make predictions ...

Imagine researchers exploring a dark room with a flashlight, only able to clearly identify what falls within that single beam. When it comes to microbial communities, scientists have historically been unable to see beyond the beam — worse, they didn’t even know how big the room is. A new study published online October 11, 2023 in Nature highlights the vast array of functional diversity of microbes through a novel approach to better understand microbial communities by looking at protein function within them. The work was led by a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy ...

【Research Study】 1. Background   Multiomics3 analysis that integrates different layers of profiles altogether is challenging, since the number of variables in profile substantially differ from each other. For instance, gene expression profile and genomic DNA methylation profile are often analyzed together, however, there are only tens of thousands of genes, whereas the number of DNA methylation sites are as many as tens of millions. The numbers differ one thousand times and the number ...

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have obtained new insights into how African-American and Hispanic-American people’s genes influence their ability to use Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids for good health. The findings are an important step toward “precision nutrition” – where a diet tailored to exactly what our bodies need can help us live longer, healthier lives. Omega-3 and Omega-6 are “healthy fats.” We can get them from foods, but many people also take ...

Genalive, a leading clinical laboratory in Saudi Arabia, has passed an audit organized by the College of American Clinical Pathologists (CAP), demonstrating its excellence in clinical laboratory testing and management practices. Genalive officially opened in June 2023, equipped with high-throughput sequencing platforms, advanced bioinformatics pipelines, AI-driven analytical tools and staffed by a team of experienced medical professionals and technicians. Genalive is a joint venture between BGI Almanahil Health for Medical Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of BGI Genomics, and Tibbiyah Holding, a renowned Saudi healthcare ...