Most Americans take it for granted that the water that comes out of their taps is clean and safe to drink.  But a new study published by a University of New Mexico scientist with colleagues from across the U.S. warns that water from many wells and community water systems contains unsafe levels of toxic contaminants, exposing millions to health risks, including cancer. The review in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology also finds that people living on tribal lands or ...

“In this work, we focused on the application of the established pipeline to the identification of the potential targets related to aging [...]” A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 18, entitled, “Biomedical generative pre-trained based transformer language model for age-related disease target discovery.” Target discovery is crucial for the development of innovative therapeutics and diagnostics. However, current approaches often face ...

Despite decades of decline, a genetic analysis of ruffed grouse reveals that Pennsylvania’s state bird harbors more genetic diversity and connectivity than expected. The findings suggest that the iconic game bird could be maintained in persistent numbers if appropriate protections are implemented. The study, led by Penn State and Pennsylvania Game Commission researchers, published in the journal Molecular Ecology. According to the researchers, Pennsylvania’s ruffed grouse populations have declined by up to 70% since the early ...

The Ohio State University (OSU) has been awarded a $20 million Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) grant from the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products and National Institutes of Health. The OSU-TCORS grant is a collaboration of experts from the colleges of medicine, public health and law organized and implemented through the Center for Tobacco Research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – Having either high or low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, or “good” cholesterol, is tied to a small increased risk of dementia in older adults, according to a study published in the October 4, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This study does not prove that high or low levels of HDL cholesterol cause dementia; it only shows an association. “Previous studies on this topic have been ...

New research fueled in part by citizen scientists reveals that the meadow spittlebug—known for the foamy, spit-like urine released by its nymphs—can feed on at least 1,300 species of host plants, more than twice the number of any other insect. The study, which is published today in the journal PLOS ONE, could be especially important in the effort to stop the bug from spreading a type of bacterium that has caused the death of crops across the world, including olive trees in Italy, grapevines in California, citrus trees in South America, and almond trees in Spain. “Thirteen hundred host plants means 1,300 opportunities ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and IEEE Computer Society have named Keshav Pingali, the W.A.”Tex” Moncrief Chair of Grid and Distributed Computing at the University of Texas at Austin, as the recipient of the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. The Ken Kennedy Award recognizes groundbreaking achievements in parallel and high performance computing. Pingali is cited for contributions to high-performance parallel computing for irregular algorithms such as graph algorithms. He is also cited for leadership on the Galois Project, which provides a unifying framework for parallelizing both irregular and regular algorithms. Pingali has made deep and wide-ranging ...

A survey of New York state residents found that nearly half of respondents increased the amount of time they spent on wild and backyard food in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, confirming anecdotes about increases in activities such as sourdough baking, fishing and gardening. People also tended to eat the food they produced, researchers found, possibly buffering the generally less healthful eating that was common at the time. “This was the period of 2020 when you couldn't find tomato cages, seeds were out of stock, and there were reports about record numbers of people hunting and ...

Winter is coming—eventually. And while the earth is warming, a new study suggests that the atmosphere is being pushed around in ways that cause long bouts of extreme winter cold or wet in some regions. The study’s authors say they have identified giant meanders in the global jet stream that bring polar air southward, locking in frigid or wet conditions concurrently over much of North America and Europe, often for weeks at a time. Such weather waves, they say, have doubled in frequency since the 1960s. In just the last few years, they have killed hundreds of people and ...

A Weill Cornell Medicine researcher has received a $610,000 grant from the Department of Defense to investigate the mechanisms causing DNA instability that potentially drives metastasis in bladder cancer. The research also aims to identify methods to intercept this spread. The Peer-Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) Idea Award funds innovative, high-risk, high-reward basic cancer research. One of the goals of the PRCRP program is to decrease the burden of cancer on service members and their families, veterans, and the American public.  “Approximately 40% of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer develop metastases, where ...

Contacts: David Hosansky, UCAR/NCAR Manager of Media Relations hosansky@ucar.edu 720-470-2073 Audrey Merket, UCAR/NCAR Science Writer and Public Information Officer amerket@ucar.edu 303-497-8293  Simultaneous outbreaks of large wildfires will become more frequent in the Western United States this century as the climate warms, putting major strains on efforts to fight fires, new research shows. The new study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), focused on wildfires of 1,000 acres or larger. It found that wildfire seasons in which ...

Whether you’re battling foes in a virtual arena or collaborating with colleagues across the globe, lag-induced disruptions can be a major hindrance to seamless communication and immersive experiences. That’s why researchers with the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) and the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed new technology to make data transfer over optical fiber communication faster and more efficient. Their new development, a novel class of optical modulators, is detailed in a new study published recently in the journal Nature Communications. Modulators can be thought of as like a light switch that controls certain ...

Rice University alumnus Louis Brus (’65) has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the “discovery and development of quantum dots,” nanosized particles with unique properties “that now spread their light from television screens and LED lamps,” according to a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announcement today. Brus, who started his undergraduate education at Rice in 1961, shares the distinction with Moungi Bawendi and Alexei Ekimov. Their work has been crucial to the development of nanotechnology, which has helped drive major computing ...

“Given the potential challenges of directly inhibiting UGDH, therapeutic strategies may extend to targeting downstream pathways and upstream substrates.”  A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on September 28, 2023, entitled, “UDP-glucose dehydrogenase (UGDH) in clinical oncology and cancer biology.” UDP-glucose-6-dehydrogenase (UGDH) is a cytosolic, hexameric enzyme that converts UDP-glucose to UDP-glucuronic acid (UDP-GlcUA), a key reaction in hormone and xenobiotic metabolism and in the production of extracellular matrix precursors.  In this review, researchers Meghan J. Price, Annee D. Nguyen, Jovita K. Byemerwa, ...

Paleolithic human populations survived even in the coldest and driest upland parts of Spain, according to a study published October 4, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño of the University of Alcalá, Spain, Javier Aragoncillo-del Rió of the Molina-Alto Tajo UNESCO Global Geopark, Spain and colleagues. Research into ancient hunter-gatherer populations of the Iberian Peninsula has mainly focused on coastal regions, with relatively little investigation into the inland. A classic hypothesis has been that the cold and dry conditions of inland Iberia ...

Antimicrobials don't appear to help pet dogs with uncomplicated diarrhea - so should likely be prescribed less often by vets - according to new causal inference study ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291057 Article Title: Target trial emulation: Do antimicrobials or gastrointestinal nutraceuticals prescribed at first presentation for acute diarrhoea cause a better clinical outcome in dogs under primary veterinary care in the UK? Author Countries: UK Funding: CP is supported at the RVC ...

A new analysis estimates a variety of potential benefits for environmental sustainability—for instance, reduced freshwater consumption and greenhouse gas emissions—that could result from switching all pet dogs and cats in the US or around the world to nutritionally sound, vegan diets. Andrew Knight of Griffith University, Australia, presents these calculations in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 4, 2023. The livestock industry has environmental impacts, such as land and freshwater ...

First fully peer-reviewed, indexed study to look at link between strict vegetarianism and genetics More people would like to be vegetarian than actually are. ‘We think it’s because there is something hard-wired here that people may be missing’ Findings open the door to further studies that could have important implications regarding dietary recommendations and the production of meat substitutes CHICAGO --- From Impossible Burger to “Meatless Mondays,” going meat-free is certainly in vogue. But a person’s genetic makeup plays ...

What if a vaccine, given to patients just before or after arriving at the hospital, could protect them against lethal superbugs that lurk in healthcare settings? That’s the premise behind an experimental vaccine invented by a USC-led team and patented by the university. Researchers designed the formula to prevent serious infections from drug-resistant pathogens. A new study shows that a single dose, administered in mouse models, put immune cells into "Incredible Hulk" mode, providing rapid protection against eight different bacteria and fungi species. “It’s an early warning system. ...

WINSTON-SALEM, NC – October 4, 2023  - A research paper published today in Science Translational Medicine presents a significant breakthrough in the area of skin regeneration and wound healing by researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM). The study, titled "Bioprinted Skin with Multiple Cell Types Promotes Skin Regeneration, Vascularization, and Epidermal Rete Ridge Formation in Full-Thickness Wounds," shows the successful development of bioprinted skin that ...

In recent years, studies have revealed that the now-arid region of northern Arabia was once much wetter and greener, providing Neolithic human populations with access to both water and game. The present aridity of the region, however, preserves little organic matter, making a reconstruction of the Neolithic lifestyle difficult. Now, in a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Heritage Science (CNR ISPC), and University College London present use-wear ...

An international team of scientists has found early human migrants left Africa for Eurasia, across the Sinai peninsula and on through Jordan, over 80-thousand years ago. Researchers from the University of Southampton (UK) and Shantou University (China), together with colleagues in Jordan, Australia and the Czech Republic(1), have proved there was a “well-watered corridor” which funnelled hunter-gatherers through The Levant towards western Asia and northern Arabia via Jordan. Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, support previous research conducted ...

EMBARGOED FOR USE UNTIL: 2 p.m. (ET) on Oct. 4, 2023 -- A UCLA-led team of researchers has found nerve pathways that supply brown adipose tissue (BAT), a type of tissue that releases chemical energy from fat metabolism as heat – a finding that could pave the way toward using it to treat obesity and related metabolic conditions. The researchers have for the first time detailed this nerve supply and provided examples of how manipulating it can change BAT activity, marking a first step toward understanding how to use it therapeutically, said ...

To date it has been unclear exactly how the sex of a bee is determined. A research team from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) comprising biologists and chemists has now identified a key gene and the molecular mechanism linked with it. In the current issue of the scientific journal Science Advances, they describe how this process is similar to a game involving two dice. The sex of a living creature has significant consequences for its form, function and behaviour. The biological sex of an organism is usually determined at the start of its life. In humans, for example, the presence of the sex-determining “Y chromosome” ...

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has selected 60 graduate students representing 26 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2023 Solicitation 1 cycle. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE National Laboratories, SCGSR prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures our national position at the forefront of discovery and innovation. “This ...