Move more, quit smoking, lose weight: great resolutions, hard to keep. But does it get easier if there is a financial incentive in return? According to research by Radboud University and others, it can be an effective tool, although there are still some obstacles. They presented their findings this week in Economisch Statistische Berichten (ESB). Some lifestyle interventions are more effective than others, but in general, financial incentives are a ‘powerful tool to help reduce health inequalities in the Netherlands’, says Koen van der Swaluw of Radboud University. Despite knowing more and more about the effectiveness of financial incentives to promote ...

In an Imperial College London study, humans displayed sympathy towards and protected AI bots who were excluded from playtime. The researchers say the study, which used a virtual ball game, highlights humans' tendency to treat AI agents as social beings – an inclination that should be considered when designing AI bots. The study is published in Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies. Lead author Jianan Zhou, from Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering, said: “This is a unique insight into how humans interact ...

Salmonella and E. coli are well-known bacteria that cause food poisoning, but less understood are species of Providencia, another causative agent of serious symptoms. Providencia rustigianii, isolated from pediatric gastroenteritis patients, has now undergone whole genome sequencing by a research team led by Osaka Metropolitan University Professor Shinji Yamasaki of the Graduate School of Veterinary Science and the Osaka International Research Center for Infectious Diseases. Members of the team had previously reported that P. rustigianii carries a cytolethal distending toxin virulence gene on its plasmid. Elimination of this gene did not ...

A new study published in the scientific journal Addiction has found that people with opioid or alcohol use disorder (OUD, AUD) who take Ozempic or similar medications to treat diabetic/weight-related conditions appear to have a 40% lower rate of opioid overdose and a 50% lower rate of alcohol intoxication than people with OUD and AUD who do not take Ozempic or similar medications.  Ozempic is one of several medications, called glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists or GLP-1 RAs, that are prescribed to treat diabetes, obesity, and other weight-related medical conditions. The medications interact with ...

Artificial nests can boost the breeding success of endangered African penguins, but different designs are more effective at different colonies according to a new study by an international team of researchers from South Africa and the UK. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal, Ecological Solutions and Evidence. A new study, led by researchers at Nelson Mandela University, which monitored the breeding success of African penguins for 12 years across South Africa has found that artificial ...

Arlington, Va. — October 17, 2024 — A new paper published today in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) describes efforts at a major children’s hospital to assess and fulfill its staffing needs for infection prevention and control, highlighting the challenges of allocating sufficient resources to this important role. Infection preventionists (IPs) at Boston Children’s Hospital found that conventional methods for calculating the number of staff for these roles do not accurately reflect the current needs of healthcare systems or the specific needs of a pediatric ...

A new study has raised questions about current approaches to predicting the risk of vessel strikes on whales.   Led by researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, an international team of scientists compared eight models currently in place to assess and forecast the risk of ships colliding with whales. The study reveals notable inconsistencies in the results across the different models.  Most reports of vessel collisions involve large whales but all species can be affected. Globally, strikes are under-reported and can often go undetected, particularly when they involve large vessels. Collisions can result in animals being injured or killed, and vessels ...

New research has revealed that the connection between per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and kidney damage may be tied to dysregulation of the gut microbiome, which is made up of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in the digestive tract. PFAS are manufactured chemicals used in a wide range of products, including everything from furniture to food packaging. They are often called “forever chemicals” because once they accumulate in the environment or the human body, they take a very long ...

Soil is essential for life and plays a crucial role in Earth's ecosystem, providing support for plant roots and hosting countless microorganisms. In a warming world, it is important to understand how soil hydrothermal conditions, particularly dry-hot extremes, have changed already and how they will respond to further warming. In a study published in PNAS, researchers led by Prof. ZHANG Yunlin from the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with collaborators from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and Bangor University, have quantified global soil compound drought-heatwave (SCDHW) ...

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) have signed an agreement to establish the International Research Laboratory “Eco-Evo-Devo of Coral Reef Fish Life Cycle” (IRL EARLY). The ceremony took place on October 7 at the STS Forum in Kyoto, Japan. Since life began in our oceans, it has diversified into a wide variety of different organisms. However, the true extent of marine diversity remains unknown, as do many species and their ecologies. Investigating the biological mechanisms of marine life can not only provide a deeper understanding of the life cycles and evolution of these organisms, it ...

  A unique group of life science professionals and advocates has come together to launch the Minoritised Life Scientists Future Forum, the first major conference in Europe dedicated to supporting and showcasing the contributions of marginalised and underrepresented communities in the life sciences. Taking place at the ICC Birmingham from 31 March to 2 April 2025, the Future Forum will offer over 200 hours of inspiring talks, workshops, and mentoring sessions. The event is designed for life scientists at all career stages from undergraduate students to early-career ...

In an era where viral outbreaks can escalate into global pandemics with alarming speed, the ability to quickly develop new vaccines has become crucial. However, the speed of vaccine production is limited because the mRNA used in it is partly chemically synthesized and partly synthesized using enzymes, a relatively slow process.   A team of researchers from Nagoya University in Japan has successfully developed an innovative synthesis technology capable of producing high purity, fully chemically ...

Over 200 leading doctors, professional bodies and charities are urging the chancellor to use the budget on 30 October to invest in creating a smoke free UK as quickly as possible, and make the tobacco industry pay. In an open letter published by The BMJ today, they warn that unless smoking is addressed, there is no prospect of delivering on Labour’s manifesto commitment to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions. The rationale for investing to end the tobacco epidemic could not be stronger, they explain. The annual cost of smoking to individuals, public ...

Potential fathers with type 2 diabetes can be reassured that taking the drug metformin is not associated with birth defects in their offspring, concludes a large study of more than 3 million pregnancies published by The BMJ today.  The researchers say the findings show that metformin can continue to be considered a suitable drug for managing blood sugar levels in men with type 2 diabetes who plan on having children. Metformin is widely used to treat type 2 diabetes in men of reproductive age, but a recent Danish study reported a link between metformin use by fathers-to-be and an increased ...

In a study of commonly used treatments for people with multiple sclerosis, both medical and behavioral interventions, and a combination of the two, resulted in meaningful improvements in fatigue, a University of Michigan-led study finds. The randomized clinical trial compared the effectiveness of modafinil, a wake-promoting medication used to treat sleepiness in people with sleep disorders, and cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, on reducing fatigue for over 300 adults with multiple sclerosis whose symptoms interfered with their ...

Individuals with multiple long-term conditions are two and a half times more likely to die following COVID-19 infection than others. When children were assessed separately the risk for mortality among those with multiple long-term conditions increased to almost three times (2.8) the risk of those without. The mortality rates are 22% and 8% respectively.  That is according to an authoritative systematic review and meta-analysis of over four million patients with COVID-19 published today (Thursday 17 October) in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.  The authors are calling for patients with multiple long-term conditions ...

Paris — An international group of leaders and experts warns that unless humanity acts with greater boldness and urgency, an increasingly out-of-balance water cycle will wreak havoc on economies and humanity worldwide. In a landmark report, The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water says the water crisis puts at risk more than half of the world’s food production by 2050. It also threatens an 8% loss of GDP in countries around the world on average by 2050, with as much ...

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among American men.  A ground-breaking study, conducted by researchers from the University of Virginia, Mount Sinai, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas and others, has demonstrated the clinical success of a new nanoparticle-based, laser-guided therapy for prostate cancer treatment.  The study, which involved 44 men with localized prostate cancer, used gold nanoshellss in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound fusion — an ...

What if a security camera could not only capture video but understand what’s happening — distinguishing between routine activities and potentially dangerous behavior in real time? That’s the future being shaped by researchers at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science with their latest breakthrough: an AI-driven intelligent video analyzer capable of detecting human actions in video footage with unprecedented precision and intelligence. The system, called the Semantic and Motion-Aware Spatiotemporal Transformer Network (SMAST), promises a wide range of ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida Health scientists exploring how combinations of antibiotics can fight resistant bacteria have been awarded an $11.8 million grant for work that could help save the tens of thousands of lives lost yearly to infections that are increasingly plaguing humanity. The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, grant to the UF College of Medicine and the UF College of Pharmacy will support scientists working to uncover the mechanics of how bacteria and antibiotics interact, down to the molecular level. That mechanistic knowledge ...

Atmospheric blocking events are persistent, high-impact weather patterns that occur when large-scale high-pressure systems become stationary and divert the jet stream and storm tracks for days to weeks, and can be associated with record-breaking flooding or heat waves, such as in Europe in 2023. In a new study, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Christina Karamperidou used a deep learning model to infer the frequency of blocking events over the past 1,000 years and shed light on how future climate change may impact these significant phenomena.    “This study set out to extract a paleoweather signal from ...

It is just as safe and effective for people with HIV in need of kidney transplantation to get their organ from donors who are also HIV positive as it is from donors who are not infected with the virus, a new study shows. Survival rates for organ recipients one and three years after the procedure were the same for donors with or without HIV. Also the same were risks of serious side effects, such as infection, fever, and rejection in the donated organ. In what is the largest comparative trial of the experimental procedures since the first transplant was performed in the United States in 2016, researchers ...

In mid-2023, the SWOG S1826 phase 3 trial in advanced Hodgkin lymphoma reported highly positive primary results earlier than expected, after the trial’s second planned interim analysis found the preset threshold for efficacy had already been reached.  Now, a follow-up analysis with additional data – a median follow-up of 2.1 years – confirms the durability of those initial findings: among the 970 newly diagnosed adolescents and adults randomized to the trial, those who received a combination of nivolumab plus AVD chemotherapy (N-AVD) had a significantly lower risk of cancer progression ...

A treatment that rallies the immune system to destroy cancer raised the survival rate for advanced Hodgkin lymphoma patients to a remarkable 92 percent, suggesting a new standard therapy for the disease. The New England Journal of Medicine published the innovative clinical trial results this week. Young people are most at risk to get Hodgkin lymphoma, an uncommon blood and immune system cancer that falls within the general category of lymphomas. With this new treatment, scientists believe they ...

WHAT:  Kidney transplantation from deceased donors with HIV (HIV D+) to recipients with HIV (HIV R+) was safe and comparable to kidney transplantation from donors without HIV (HIV D-) in a multicenter observational study in the United States. The clinical outcomes observed were consistent with smaller pilot studies, but this National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial was the first statistically powered to demonstrate noninferiority, which means that an approach being studied is as good as standard clinical practice. The results were published today ...