For the first time, a major group of international experts and patients have cooperated defining new parameters for the development of medicines to treat children and young people.  They make a series of recommendations on how the processes should be improved.  The work is published today in the peer-reviewed journal, The Lancet Psychiatry. The work was led by a group of experts from the Child and Adolescent Network of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), alongside representatives from the European Medicine Agency (EMA) and families ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Many people associate virtual reality headsets with interactive video games, but a researcher at the University of Missouri is using them for something far more important — helping autistic people navigate public transportation on college campuses. MU researcher Noah Glaser — in collaboration with Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, and others — partnered with a program at the University of Cincinnati on a pair of studies geared toward providing autistic people virtual training opportunities to practice ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 7, 2023 — The elements above iron on the periodic table are thought to be created in cataclysmic explosions like the merger of two neutron stars or in rare classes of supernovae. New research suggests fission may operate in the cosmos during the creation of the heavy elements. Combing through data on a variety of elements that reside in very old stars, researchers have found a potential signature of fission, indicating that nature is likely to produce superheavy nuclei beyond the heaviest elements on the periodic table. “People have thought fission was happening in the cosmos, but ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded The University of Texas at Arlington a $1.1 million grant to train and mentor three multi-level cohorts of interdisciplinary researchers in mathematical and computational techniques to address questions in cancer biology, computational neurology and vector-borne diseases. Led by Hristo Kojouharov, principal investigator and professor of mathematics, the research team plans to recruit and mentor nine undergraduate students, six doctoral students and two postdoctoral researchers. Joining ...

The entire country faced record high temperatures in the summer of 2023, along with record numbers of heat-related illnesses. But towering above rural and suburban records were the urban heat islands—bubbles of heat that surround cities, increasing the experienced temperature by up to five degrees Celsius (eight degrees Fahrenheit). “Urbanization drastically changes the landscape,” said Associate Professor Nick Zhou, a materials scientist specializing in sustainable building systems. “Most urban land is covered ...

SYDNEY, Dec. 8, 2023 – Vocal fry has a bad reputation in American English. A subtype of creaky voice, a feature of speech that sounds gravelly and pulselike, this manner of speech is sometimes used to form judgment about the speaker. In many languages, the creaky tone changes the meaning of words, exhibited in Lango spoken in South Sudan or Jalapa Mazatec spoken in Mexico. Hannah White and her Department of Linguistics colleagues at Macquarie University researched how creaky voice is reflected in Australian English used in Sydney, and what factors influence its prevalence. She will present ...

Artificial intelligence models that pick out patterns in images can often do so better than human eyes — but not always. If a radiologist is using an AI model to help her determine whether a patient’s X-rays show signs of pneumonia, when should she trust the model’s advice and when should she ignore it?  A customized onboarding process could help this radiologist answer that question, according to researchers at MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. They designed a system that teaches a user when to collaborate with an AI assistant. In ...

In a major stride toward revolutionizing indoor navigation, a City College of New York-led team has developed groundbreaking technology that could chart real-time paths, delivering users—both sighted and low vision—a seamless and accurate indoor navigation experience complete with turn-by-turn guidance. The invention has earned a U.S. patent  titled "System and Method for Real-time Indoor Navigation." The innovation is the brainchild of the City College-based CUNY Computational Vision and Convergence Laboratory (CCVCL) headed by Zhigang ...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University will partner with Colorado State University (CSU), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and other institutions in the creation of two inertial fusion science and technology hubs that were announced today by the DOE.  Following on last year’s fusion ignition breakthrough at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, the hubs aim to accelerate foundational inertial fusion research and technology development toward a potential clean and abundant energy source. In total, $42 million was awarded to collaborations between universities, ...

Twitch. Some see it as a fun online community of gamers and good-natured e-sports fandom. For others, it’s a perilous stream of potentially toxic content and hate speech.   In the ever-evolving landscape of digital communication, the real-time nature of messages on live-stream platforms like Twitch and YouTube Live brings with it unique challenges for content moderation. At present, effective tools for moderating content in live streams are lacking because existing models have been trained on non-real-time social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Research Assistant Dong-Ho Lee and Principal Scientist Jay Pujara, ...

URBANA, Ill. – When farmers harvest their grain, they can choose to sell it right away or store it to obtain better prices later in the season. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores how Illinois corn and soybean producers make those decisions and why the cost-benefit evaluation of storage may differ across farms. Agricultural commodity prices fluctuate in response to changes in supply and demand, which depends on the stockpile of grain inventories around the country — but economists don’t really don't know how farmers decide to sell versus store their grain. “Economic theory provides guidance that Extension ...

    When discharging Black patients from the hospital, nurses are less likely to refer them to home health care than white patients, a new University of Michigan study found.   About 22% of Black patients are referred by discharge nurses to home health care compared to 27% of white patients.    The study found that despite a higher likelihood that Black patients were unmarried, lived alone and had more chronic conditions—all risk factors for hospital readmission—they were routinely rated equally ready for hospital discharge as white patients, and ...

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation is thrilled to announce the launch of the Damon Runyon Scholars Program for Advancing Research and Knowledge (SPARK), a one-year intensive cancer research internship program for post-baccalaureate students who come from backgrounds underrepresented in the sciences. The goal of the program is to provide students who have the potential to become leaders in cancer research with rigorous scientific training and a network of mentors and peers to support their next steps into graduate school and beyond.  Damon ...

LISLE, Ill. (Dec. 7, 2023)— The Morton Arboretum Tree Root Biologist Luke McCormack, Ph.D., has been recognized as one of the most cited and influential researchers worldwide by global information services provider Clarivate’s esteemed 2023 list of “Highly Cited Researchers.”  The list includes influential researchers at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations around the world who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field(s) of research. McCormack is the first Arboretum ...

Racial discrimination and bias are painful realities and increasingly recognized as detrimental to the health of adults and children. These stressful experiences also appear to be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, altering the strength of infants’ brain circuits, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia, Yale, and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. The study found similar brain changes in infants whose mothers experienced stress from adapting to a new culture during pregnancy. “A leading hypothesis would be that the connectivity changes that we see could ...

DETROIT – Wayne State University Interim Vice President for Research Timothy Stemmler, Ph.D., announced today the university’s Board of Governors approved the creation of two research initiatives that aim to improve the health and lives of the Detroit community and beyond. Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases The Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases (CEID) will contribute to the ongoing advancement of diagnostic testing, enabling rapid and accurate identification of infectious ...

A new method, developed at Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SciLifeLab in Sweden, can identify unique immune cell receptors and their location in tissue, a study published in the journal Science reports. The researchers predict that the method will improve the ability to identify which immune cells contribute to disease processes and open up opportunities to develop novel therapies for numerous diseases. Immune cells such as T and B cells are central to the body’s defence against both infections and tumours. Both types of immune cells express unique receptors that specifically recognise different parts of unwanted and foreign elements, such as bacteria, viruses ...

INDIANAPOLIS— Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have uncovered vital insights regarding a liver trigger that blocks an undesired immune response from gene therapy, surprisingly resulting in the activation of specific immune cells, despite the liver's typical role in suppressing immune responses. The findings, published in Molecular Therapy, may pave the way for change in immunomodulation strategies for desired and long-lasting effects of gene therapy. Gene therapy treatments involve replacing or introducing a healthy copy of ...

East Hanover, NJ – December 07, 2023 – Kessler Foundation, a leader in rehabilitation research, and Virtualware, an international leader in immersive and interactive technologies, expand their collaboration with a new agreement to further research and development aimed at advancing spatial neglect rehabilitation using virtual reality (VR) and tele-rehabilitation technology. This latest development stems from a strong, ongoing partnership initiated in 2018 between the VR innovator and the New Jersey-based disability-focused non-profit. The intervention, ...

North Carolina State University researchers have developed a weeklong high school curriculum that helps students quickly grasp concepts in both color chemistry and artificial intelligence – while sparking their curiosity about science and the world around them. To test whether a short high school science module could effectively teach students something about both chemistry – a notoriously thorny subject – and artificial intelligence (AI), the researchers designed a relatively simple experiment involving pH levels, which reflect the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid solution.  When testing pH levels on a test strip, color conversion charts provide a handy ...

LONDON, DECEMBER 6, 2023 – Bering Limited, a London-based medical AI company, today announced it received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for its AI-powered chest X-Ray triage solution, ‘BraveCX’. With the FDA clearance, the company is now able to commercially provide the AI solution to medical professionals and healthcare institutions in the U.S. Bering’s BraveCX is a radiological computer-assisted triage and notification software that analyzes adult (≥18 years old) chest X-ray (CXR) images for the presence of ...

Paleontologists are getting a glimpse at life over a billion years in the past based on chemical traces in ancient rocks and the genetics of living animals. Research published Dec. 1 in Nature Communications combines geology and genetics, showing how changes in the early Earth prompted a shift in how animals eat. David Gold, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Davis, works in the new field of molecular paleontology, using the tools of both geology and biology to study the evolution ...

African honeyguide birds understand and respond to the culturally distinct signals made by local human honey hunters, suggesting cultural coevolution between species, according to a new study. Although the animal kingdom is full of interspecific mutualism, systems in which humans successfully cooperate with wild animals are rare. One such relationship involves the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator), a small African bird known to lead humans to wild bees’ nests. Humans open the nests to collect honey, and the honeyguides eat the exposed beeswax. Human honey hunters in different parts of Africa often use ...

The controlled creation of quantum entanglement with molecules has been a long-standing challenge in quantum science. Now, in two new studies, researchers report a method for tailoring the quantum states of individual molecules to achieve quantum entanglement on demand. Their strategy presents a promising new platform for the advancement of quantum technologies such as computation and sensing. Quantum entanglement is one of the key defining features of quantum mechanics. It is central to many quantum applications. Because of their rich internal structure ...

Annual tree-ring growth records from more than 122 species of trees show that trees growing in wetter forests are more sensitive to increasing drought. The findings – which tackle a research question that has yielded contradictory results in the past – suggest that land management and policy focused solely on drought effects in drier regions overestimates the resilience of forests in wetter regions. Forests cover roughly 30% of Earth’s surface and, in addition to providing a host of valuable ecosystem services and harboring huge biodiversity, they play a crucial role in the planet’s carbon cycle, absorbing more atmospheric carbon than all other terrestrial ...