PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Biologists at Brown University have discovered how a neuropeptide hormone made in the gut of flies can control their lifespan. The findings, published in PNAS, have implications for humans, too, the researchers say — especially as new diabetes and obesity medications based on gut hormones in the same family of the fly hormone are becoming more widespread. For the past two decades, study author Marc Tatar, a professor of biology affiliated with the Center on the Biology of Aging at Brown University, has studied how the hormones insulin and insulin-like ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – For people with ischemic stroke, treatment with the clot-busting drug tenecteplase is associated with a slightly higher likelihood of an excellent recovery and reduced disability three months later than the drug alteplase, according to a meta-analysis published in the October 16, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found that the likelihood of good recovery was similar ...

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found an FDA-approved drug used to treat breast cancer has the potential to be an effective therapeutic for a specific type of appendix cancer.  The clinical trial results, publishing in the October 16, 2024 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed the oral medication, known as palbociclib, stabilized tumor growth and reduced blood tumor marker levels in patients with peritoneal mucinous carcinomatosis (PMC). This form of cancer originates in the appendix and is often resistant to standard chemotherapy. “Finding that a breast cancer drug is ...

Research published in Nature Genetics on Oct.14, by Yale Cancer Center researchers at Yale School of Medicine, found a higher concentration of a specific kind of DNA — extrachromosomal or ecDNA — in more aggressive and advanced cancers that could mark them as targets for future therapies.  Using data available from The Cancer Genome Atlas, the International Cancer Genomics Consortium, the Hartwig Medical Foundation, and the Glioma Longitudinal Analysis Consortium, the researchers considered more than 8,000 tumor samples, divided between newly diagnosed untreated tumors and those that had been through previous treatments ...

PHILADELPHIA (October 16, 2024) – J. Margo Brooks Carthon, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Tyson Family Endowed Term Chair for Gerontological Research; Professor of Nursing in the Department of Family and Community Health; and Associate Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, has been appointed the new Director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing (Bates Center), the preeminent history of nursing research center and archive. The Bates Center amplifies the importance of the history of nursing and healthcare to the development of crafting effective health policies and strategies to improve health for all. “The ...

Scientists are developing advanced tools to understand and treat neurological symptoms such as brain fog associated with respiratory diseases like influenza. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded a three-year contract to researchers at the University of Rochester to develop a technology to model respiratory disease effects on the brain ...

WASHINGTON, DC – As the nation continues to build a diverse, clean-energy workforce, the Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that applications are being accepted for the Summer 2025 term of two undergraduate internship programs. The Office of Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program and the Community College Internships (CCI) program are unique opportunities open to all current and recent college undergraduates. Interns will learn about science and technology careers, team science, networking, and gain the experience needed to transition from internship to employment. The application deadline for both programs is January 8, 2025, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Several medications are available to treat high blood pressure, but more than 10 million Americans do not respond to the treatments, according to the American Heart Association. Using a bioelectronic device to deliver pulsed electricity to the body has proven to be a promising strategy to treat drug-resistant hypertension patients, according to Penn State researcher Tao Zhou, although he noted that its practical application in patient care has significant limitations.  Zhou, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics and of biomedical engineering, received ...

U.S. researchers have detected microplastic particles in air exhaled by wild bottlenose dolphins, suggesting that inhalation may be a relevant route of exposure to these potentially harmful contaminants. Miranda Dziobak of the College of Charleston in South Carolina, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 16, 2024. Around the world, humans and numerous other animals are exposed to tiny particles of plastic contaminants known as microplastics. In humans and rodents, microplastic exposure has been linked to adverse health impacts, such as oxidative stress and inflammation. Ingestion ...

A new paper published today in Science Advances exposes the global aquaculture sector’s growing dependence on wild fish. Despite industry claims to the contrary, these findings highlight how the growing appetite for expensive farmed salmon can leave coastal communities struggling to access affordable local fish like sardines and anchovies. Instead, these small pelagic fish are frequently caught, processed, and “reduced” to fishmeal and fish oil, almost all of which is used to feed farmed fish. These ‘reduction fisheries’ account for 26% of global ocean catch.    “As the aquaculture industry grows, so does its ...

Neural spheroids — 3D clusters of brain cells — are emerging as essential tools for understanding neural networks and studying neurological diseases in the lab. EPFL’s e-Flower, a flower-shaped 3D microelectrode array (MEA), allows researchers to monitor the electrical activity of these spheroids in a way that was previously impossible. This breakthrough, published in Science Advances, lays the groundwork for more sophisticated research on brain organoids, which are complex, miniaturized models of brain tissues. “The ...

A study published in the journal Science Advances suggests that global fish farming, or aquaculture, may rely on significantly larger quantities of wild-caught ocean fish than previously calculated. The study is part of a special issue focused on expanding contributions from the aquaculture industry to food systems with an aim towards sustainability. These findings call into question long-held assumptions about the sustainability of the rapidly growing aquaculture industry and provides a range of plausible estimates for its impact on wild fish populations. The research, led by an international team of scientists ...

A collaborative effort between investigators at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, demonstrates the potential of precise genome editing technologies, called adenine base editors, to correct disease-causing mutations in stem cells from patients with X-linked chronic granulomatous disease (X-CGD), a rare genetic disorder characterized by high susceptibility to infections. The findings are published in Science Translational Medicine. Patients with ...

On present-day Earth, plate subduction continuously modifies the chemical composition of the convecting mantle, and various mantle sources linked to these processes have been widely studied. However, when did global chemical heterogeneity of the convecting mantle first emerge in Earth's geological history? And how might Earth’s geodynamic evolution have influenced the chemical composition of the convecting mantle over time? Researchers from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS), along with collaborators from Australia, Switzerland and the USA, have tried to address these questions ...

Multilingual students face unique challenges that can hurt their performance in school. New methods of teaching may help close this gap, according to a new study from the University of Georgia. In the United States, English is the main language used in classrooms. Schools also tend to rely on spoken communication to teach and written exams to assess learning. That can make it difficult for multilingual students to express themselves. This is especially true in science classes, with their specific terms and complex sentence structures. So a UGA researcher developed an immersive virtual reality game to communicate scientific ...

Video available here. Without proper medical invention, injuries sustained from traffic collisions, serious workplace accidents or weapons may result in fatal hemorrhaging. University of Central Florida researchers aim to prevent such bleeding in potentially deadly situations with a new hemostatic spongelike bandage with antimicrobial efficacy that they recently developed and detailed in a newly published study in the journal Biomaterials Science. “What happens in the field or during an accident is due to heavy bleeding, patients can die,” says Kausik Mukhopadhyay, assistant professor of materials ...

When an election result is disputed, people who are skeptical about the outcome may be swayed by figures of authority who come down on one side or the other. Those figures can be independent monitors, political figures, or news organizations. However, these “debunking” efforts don’t always have the desired effect, and in some cases, they can lead people to cling more tightly to their original position. Neuroscientists and political scientists at MIT and the University of California at Berkeley have now ...

Identifying whether online information is faulty or ungrounded is important to ensure information integrity and a well-informed public. This was especially challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic when misinformation spread like wildfire across the Internet. A new project led by Dong Wang, associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will integrate diverse human and machine intelligence to examine multimodal data (e.g., text and image) that was produced during the pandemic. ...

BEAUFORT, N.C. -- To whales that hunt with soundwaves in the lightless depths of the ocean, a torn plastic party balloon and a delicious squid seem to be remarkably similar, according to a new study that put some plastic beach trash through underwater acoustic testing. "These acoustic signatures are similar, and this might be a reason that these animals are driven to consume plastic instead of, or in addition to, their prey," said Duke University graduate student Greg Merrill, who led the research. "One hundred percent of plastic marine debris ...

How can we engineer materials that are stronger and lighter? What about new materials for extreme conditions such as in jet engines and spacecrafts? The answer, says Fadi Abdeljawad, an associate professor of materials science and engineering in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, might be hidden in the infinitesimally tiny regions, or boundaries, where atoms in crystals come together. Along with his collaborators at the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Abdeljawad is uncovering how those ...

Washington, D.C. (October 16, 2024) – For the first time, adults living with congenital heart disease (CHD) now have valuable insights into their long-term quality of life through data from the Congenital Heart Initiative (CHI). CHI is the nation’s first and largest patient-focused registry for adults with CHD and released its first study involving over 4,500 participants from all 50 states.  This research, published today in JAMA Network Open, marks a significant step forward in making better information available for the ...

Researchers at Colorado State University have identified an alternate method to study changes during the DNA replication process in lab settings using genetically modified yeast. The new approach offers a clearer window than current drug methods used to understand cell cycle arrest – a fundamental mechanism that is key to treating cancers and genetic issues. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and were led at CSU by Assistant Professor Grant Schauer in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The work focuses on hydroxyurea, a chemotherapy drug used ...

Synthetic diamond is durable, inert, rigid, thermally conductive and chemically well-behaved—an elite material for both quantum and conventional electronics. But there’s one problem. Diamond only likes diamond. It’s homoepitaxial, meaning it only grows on other diamonds, and integrating diamond into quantum or conventional computers, quantum sensors, cellphones, or other devices would mean sacrificing the diamond’s full potential or using large, expensive chunks of the precious material. “Diamond stands alone in terms of its material properties, both for electronics—with its wide band gap, ...

A new study analyzes the links between the enactment of major air pollution and climate policies in New York City and significant improvement in air quality during the period 1998-2021. It finds a cumulative beneficial effect of these policies both city-wide and among residents residing in communities that have been disproportionately affected by air pollution. The study by environmental health scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Public Health. “Because of the known significant associations between the pollutants studied and multiple adverse health effects, there are important implications for health ...

New research gives another reason to take folic acid supplements while pregnant. A new study by Simon Fraser University researchers has found that folate may weaken the link between blood-lead levels in pregnant women and autistic-like behaviours in their children.    Researchers from SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, led by PhD candidate Joshua Alampi, published the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.   “Folic acid supplementation during pregnancy has numerous benefits to child health, especially brain development,” ...