The SUSTAIN Wellbeing COMPASS Coordinating Center of the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work has made a lasting impact in the fight against the HIV epidemic in the Southern U.S. over the past five years, particularly for Black and Latinx-led organizations. The SUSTAIN Center is one of four across the South funded by the Gilead COMPASS Initiative®, an unprecedented 10-year, more than $100 million effort to address the Southern HIV epidemic by collaborating with local community organizations and stakeholders to use evidence-based solutions to meet the needs of people living with and impacted by HIV/AIDS. Led ...

Long before another school year started for K-12 students across Texas, a Texas A&M University-led team has been hard at work behind the scenes to position high school students throughout the Lone Star state for future college writing success. Leading the college-readiness charge is Dr. Terri Pantuso, an instructional associate professor in the Department of English and associate dean for assessment and curricular matters in the College of Arts and Sciences, who recently received a $1.2 million service contract from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) aimed at better ...

Governments, nonprofit organizations, and other groups spend roughly $100 billion a year to support conservation. Restrictions on where conservation funds can be spent, however, prevent organizations from focusing on the most promising opportunities to help species. A new study led by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, suggests a way to improve the situation. “There are plenty of conservation bargains still available in the United States,” said Paul Armsworth, professor in the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and lead author of the study. “Some ...

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a bastion of nuclear physics research for the past 80 years, is poised to strengthen its programs and service to the United States over the next decade if national recommendations of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, or NSAC, are enacted. “The 2023 Long Range Plan lays out a compelling vision for nuclear science in the United States under multiple budget scenarios,” said Gail Dodge, physicist at Old Dominion University and chair of the NSAC. “Implementation of the Long Range Plan’s ...

The world is full of good ideas, but only some of them become viable and real. “You don’t see the full impact of a good idea until someone figures out a way to convert it to a usable product or service that has value, brings it to market and makes money off of it – this is what makes it a sustainable business,” said S. Radhakrishnan, a retired University of Houston business professor and coordinator of UH Energy’s Innovation Commercialization Competition. “To have a successful energy transition, we need many innovative ideas to be commercialized.” Keeping this in mind, Radhakrishnan worked hard to grow the second annual Energy Innovation Commercialization ...

Once thought to be the trash can of the cell, a little bubble of cellular stuff called the midbody remnant is actually packing working genetic material with the power to change the fate of other cells — including turning them into cancer. It’s a surprise to many people, according to Ahna Skop, a University of Wisconsin­–Madison genetics professor, that when one cell divides into two, a process called mitosis, the result is not just the two daughter cells. “One cell divides into three things: two cells and ...

Photos will be added to the release link as available. On average worldwide, fewer than one in every ten cardiac arrest victims outside of the hospital survive.[1] Too many people do not survive from cardiac arrest because those around them are not educated on the lifesaving skills of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Knowing CPR can be a lifesaving tactic. On October 7, 2023, the Chasing M’s Foundation - professional football player Damar Hamlin’s charity - the American Heart Association, the British Heart Foundation ...

A research team led by the Keck School of Medicine of USC has discovered that a non-invasive eye exam may be a possible tool for screening Black Americans and other people from underdiagnosed and high-risk populations for cerebral small vessel disease, a major contributor to cognitive impairment and dementia. After Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, associated with impaired blood flow to the brain, is the second most common dementia diagnosis.  “Most people with cerebral small vessel disease are not diagnosed until significant brain damage has occurred. Damage to the brain cells is not reversible.” ...

In urban areas throughout the United States, it is imperative for all communities to have equal access to high quality parks. These parks can have many benefits for the physical and mental well-being of the residents who live in close proximity to the urban green spaces. For instance, they are a place to socialize and exercise outdoors while also providing vegetation nearby, which can help reduce urban heat. Yet, in the City of Philadelphia, not all parks are created equal, according to a new study from the University of Delaware. Using a machine learning algorithm to analyze 285 ...

The offspring of adolescent and young adult women with a history of cancer face a higher risk of birth defects, according to new research from UTHealth Houston. A study led by Caitlin C. Murphy, PhD, MPH, associate professor of health promotion and behavioral sciences at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, was published recently in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. “Concerns like the health of future children are at the top of mind for many young adults diagnosed with cancer, but they are already so overwhelmed at the time of diagnosis with ...

Intrusive thoughts, involuntary repetition of undesirable gestures and behaviors combined with high anxiety... Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a disabling condition, affects around 2% of the population, regardless of age. It is a strong vector of isolation since patients disproportionately focus on various obsessions—to the detriment of relationships, work, and leisure. Treatment mainly consists of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that allows patients to readjust their thought patterns, combined with antidepressants. Unfortunately, the effects are slow to appear, and 30 to 40% of patients do not respond at all. “In this context, an option ...

Every year, over 15,500 Australians are diagnosed with bowel cancer, and it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the country. Over 1,700 (one in ten) of those diagnosed are young Australians aged under 50, and this incidence is increasing. There is an urgent need to discover more effective treatments and improve bowel cancer screening, particularly for early-onset bowel cancer (those aged 25-49 years). Australians born in 1990 onwards have double the risk of developing bowel cancer compared with those born in 1950. These younger bowel cancer patients often have poorer outcomes as they typically present with late-stage ...

Patients with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency disorder (SCID-X1), sometimes called “bubble boy disease,” are born with a defective gene that prevents them from producing immune cells. Gene therapy from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital restored the immune system in multiple infants with SCID-X1 in 2019 by supplying copies of the corrected gene. Through ongoing efforts to monitor patient safety, St. Jude scientists recently documented where the gene copies integrate into patient DNA, providing a foundation to understand the biology and safety of using lentiviral vectors. The findings were published today in Science Advances.   “We ...

The human brain is a tangled highway of wires emanating from nearly 100 billion neurons, all of which communicate across trillions of junctions called synapses. “Depressingly complex,” Harvard neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman calls it. The only way to understand this highway, says Lichtman, is to create a map. Lichtman, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, has spent several decades generating such maps, and in doing so has pioneered a field known as “connectomics.” ...

  A study published Oct. 4 in Gastroenterology further validates that pyrvinium, a drug that has been used for decades for intestinal pinworms, can be repurposed as a preventative treatment for stomach cancer. Eunyoung Choi, PhD, assistant professor of Surgery, and colleagues have demonstrated in human organoids and mouse models that the drug induces cell death in precancerous lesions. Pyrvinium blockades both the MEK/ERK and STAT3 signaling pathways. In another study she led, which was published last year in Gastroenterology, the researchers demonstrated that pyrvinium blocked regeneration of dysplastic ...

Scientists have caught fast-moving hydrogen atoms – the keys to countless biological and chemical reactions – in action. A team led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University used ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) to record the motion of hydrogen atoms within ammonia molecules. Others had theorized they could track hydrogen atoms with electron diffraction, but until now nobody had done the experiment successfully. The results, published October 5 in Physical ...

The Grand Canyon’s valleys and millions of years of rock layers spanning Earth’s history have earned it a designation as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. But, according to a new UNLV and University of New Mexico study, its marvels extend to vast cave systems that lie beneath the surface, which just might hold clues to better understand the future of climate change — by studying nature’s past. A research team led by UNLV paleoclimatologist and Professor Matthew Lachniet that included the University of New Mexico Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences Distinguished Professor Yemane Asmerom and Research Scientist Victor Polyak and other ...

Lugano, Switzerland, 6 October 2023 – Under the promise to “Disseminating innovative research for optimal cancer care” as this year’s tagline reads, the ESMO Congress 2023 will be held in Madrid between 20-24 October 2023 with a virtual component to allow as many people as possible to attend.  From a keynote lecture pinpointing the hallmarks of cancer in the current year through the reinforced commitment towards more academic input in the drug development process for better cancer care, and then further down to the dramatic scenarios brought by the too many situations of crisis in the world which have an unbearable impact ...

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, known as UTRGV, have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen research cooperation and establish a collaborative program for undergraduate research and education, further cementing relationships and collaboration between the lab and minority-serving institutions. This partnership builds a pathway for students to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, careers through DOE by complementing ...

“Several ongoing trials hope to further elucidate the role of lurbinectedin in highgrade neuroendocrine neoplasms [...]” BUFFALO, NY- October 6, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncoscience (Volume 10) on June 14, 2023, entitled, “Lurbinectedin, a DNA minor groove inhibitor for neuroendocrine neoplasms beyond small cell lung cancer.” In their new editorial, researchers Deepak Bhamidipati and Vivek Subbiah from the Sarah Cannon Research Institute discuss lurbinectedin as a method to treat neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). NETs encompass a variety ...

Key Takeaways Researchers have posted the results of a multisystem phase II clinical trial of patients with COVID-19 and respiratory failure Patients who received inhaled nitric oxide had improved blood oxygen levels and fewer risks of long-term sensory and motor neurologic symptoms They also experienced a faster reduction of viral load in sputum and blood BOSTON – Inhaled nitric oxide gas widens blood vessels in the lungs and is used to treat severe cardio-pulmonary conditions in newborns and adults. A recent multicenter international ...

East Hanover, NJ – October 6, 2023 –The labor force participation and employment-to-population ratio have held relatively steady throughout the summer and into the fall for people with disabilities, while percentages for people without disabilities may have maxed out at their pre-pandemic baseline, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). In comparison, the employment-to-population ratio for people without disabilities remained flat with no change, while ...

African Americans have long been known to be at increased risk of kidney disease due to a dangerous genetic mutation that creates a hole in the kidney cells, but Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) researchers have now discovered a protective genetic mutation that covers the hole to eliminate the risk.   The findings on the apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1) gene, published today in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, could have immediate and broad implications for kidney health because people with both the disease-causing and protective mutation are not at increased risk.   “Our team discovered ...

Aston University, UK, is offering a group of highly talented graduates of Symbiosis Institute of Technology (SIT), India the opportunity to study for a Masters degree.   The two institutions have signed a progression agreement which is designed to make it easier for top SIT graduates to apply for courses at Aston University.   The Aston-SIT partnership has been developed from the support of the British Council via its going global partnerships exploratory grant scheme. The areas of study cover a wide range of MSc programmes in engineering, physical sciences and business studies.   Aston University is in Birmingham, ...

SAN ANTONIO, Oct. 6, 2023 – Three decades after discoveries linking mutations in the BRCA1 gene to breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility, research led by Mays Cancer Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) has pinpointed the molecular mechanism by which a large portion of these mutations cause cancers in women. The discovery, unveiled in an Oct. 4 research article in the journal Molecular Cell, is poised to assist researchers in developing drugs to battle breast and ovarian cancers and to help identify women who are at an elevated risk of developing these cancers, according to the ...