Researchers have shown that larger insects such as woodlice and beetles play as much of a crucial role in leaf litter decomposition across different habitats and seasons as microbes and smaller invertebrates.  The research, published today as a final Version of Record after previously appearing as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, was described by editors as a fundamental study that substantially advances our understanding of the role of different-sized soil invertebrates in shaping the rates of leaf litter decomposition. The authors provide compelling evidence that the summed effects of all decomposers on decomposition rates, with large-sized invertebrates being ...

The inaugural Art and Science of Total Synthesis of Natural and Designed Molecules for Biology and Medicine (ASTS-NDM 2024) symposium brought together some of the world’s most renowned organic chemists Oct. 2-4 at the historic Club de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. Hosted by Rice University’s Global Paris Center , the event explored the evolving role of synthetic organic chemistry and total synthesis of natural and designed molecules in fields such as medicine, materials science and chemical biology. The three-day symposium attracted leading figures in synthetic organic chemistry, featuring 18 speakers who presented ...

In Miami—a place known for one of the most diverse tree canopies in the world—nearly half of the native trees may struggle to survive in the coming decades, a new University of Miami study indicates. Due to global warming, temperatures may simply become too hot for some of the types of trees that dominate the city’s current landscape, like live oaks, slash pines, and cabbage palms. But the research also found that strategically planting more tropical trees may help the local canopy stay resilient in the face of climate change. Through an extensive data analysis project, a team of ecologists in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences discovered ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA – Active electronics — components that can control electrical signals — usually contain semiconductor devices that receive, store, and process information. These components, which must be made in a clean room, require advanced fabrication technology that is not widely available outside a few specialized manufacturing centers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of widespread semiconductor fabrication facilities was one cause of a worldwide electronics shortage, which drove up costs for consumers and had implications in everything from economic growth to national defense. The ability to 3D print an entire, active electronic ...

Graduates who went to medical school for three years performed equally well on tests of skill and knowledge as their peers who followed a four-year program, a new study shows. The accelerated three-year MD pathway offered by NYU Grossman School of Medicine beginning in 2013 was designed to help students earn their medical degrees sooner with reduced debt, which some experts say reaches $250,000 on average by graduation. The school was the first in the United States to offer a three-year MD program that ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 15, 2024 —Two Southwest Research Institute instruments were launched aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on Oct. 14 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. The spacecraft is designed to conduct a detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon Europa, investigating whether it could hold conditions suitable for life. The SwRI-developed MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) and Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS) are among nine science instruments and a gravity science investigation that were developed to explore Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest ...

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, Cleveland: Researchers at Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) have developed a new method that could potentially help provide better access to lung transplant for transplant candidates who are hard to match because of their blood type or height.   An analysis published in the Journal of Heart & Lung Transplantation showed significant inequity in lung transplant access based on these candidate characteristics and proposes a method for addressing it.   Lung transplant candidates require organs from donors of similar height and compatible blood type. Currently, to allow equally sick candidates equal ...

In 2019, Raymond Mailhot was visiting with a young patient and his family facing a scary diagnosis – brain cancer. Treatments were incredibly effective, and the young boy was going to survive, Mailhot shared in Spanish with the Venezuelan immigrants.  But life would be disrupted at home, at the hospital, and at school, likely for months, he said.  “His story really made me want to dig deeper into the scholastic performance of survivors,” said Mailhot, M.D., M.P.H, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Florida. “We discovered that survivors had twice the odds of being held back and performed significantly worse on state testing ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2024 – The U.S. is ramping up plans for a major increase in offshore wind production, with 30 gigawatts of new installations expected by 2030 and a total of 110 gigawatts by 2050. But to be successful, the country needs to design turbines that can withstand the challenges of tropical storms. “Extreme weather impacts on offshore wind turbines are not fully understood by the industry,” author Jiali Wang said. “Manufacturers design wind turbines based on international design standards, but better models and data are needed to study the impacts of extreme weather ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, older adults hospitalized with sepsis were more likely to die or experience major morbidity as the hospital COVID-19 burden increased. These increases in adverse outcomes were greater in magnitude among members of minority populations than for white individuals.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Laurent G. Glance, MD, email laurent_glance@urmc.rochester.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.38563) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

A critical transition in early human development is regulated not by our own genes, but by DNA elements called transposons that can move around the genome, Sinai Health researchers have found. This remarkable discovery challenges our previous understanding of these elusive DNA segments, shedding new light on the roles they play in human development and disease. “People tend to think of transposons as akin to viruses where they hijack our cells for the sole purpose of propagating themselves,” says study’s senior co-author Dr. Miguel Ramalho-Santos, Senior Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health, and Professor ...

Bonobos, endangered great apes that are among our closest relatives, might be more vulnerable than previously understood, finds a genetics study led by a UCL researcher that reveals three distinct populations. The three groups of bonobos have been living separately in different regions in Central Africa for tens of thousands of years, according to the study published in Current Biology by an international research team co-led by UCL, University of Vienna, and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Hormone-driven cancers, like those of the breast and prostate, often rely on a tricky-to-target protein called Forkhead box protein 1 (FOXA1). FOXA1 mutations can enable these types of cancers to grow and proliferate. Today, FOXA1 is notoriously difficult to block with drugs—but that may soon change. Scripps Research scientists have identified a crucial binding site on FOXA1 that could pave the way for future cancer treatments. The team’s findings, which were published in Molecular Cell on October 15, 2024, also mapped out how tiny drug-like chemical compounds—called small molecules—interact with the protein. While ...

TUCSON, AZ — October 15, 2024 — The Giant Magellan Telescope today announced the successful installation of one of its completed 8.4-meter-diameter primary mirrors into a support system prototype at the University of Arizona’s Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. This highly sophisticated system — comparable in size to half a basketball court and containing three times the number of parts of a typical car — is vital to the telescope’s optical performance and precision control. The milestone marks the start of a six-month optical testing phase to demonstrate that the support system can control the mirror as required, validating the revolutionary capabilities ...

In a new study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine, the drug RK-33 has demonstrated promise in treating breast cancer that has spread to the bone (breast cancer bone metastasis). RK-33 was previously shown to help treat other types of cancer and viral illnesses. Patients with breast cancer and bone metastasis have limited treatment options and often rely on palliative care to ease difficult symptoms, including frailty and pain. In most cases, breast cancer with bone metastasis is incurable. Now, corresponding author Venu Raman, Ph.D., ...

A majority of Floridians expressed support for political candidates who fight climate change in a new Florida Atlantic University survey. The survey found that nearly 52% of respondents agreed that a candidate with a record of reducing climate impacts was more likely to get their vote.    The Invading Sea’s Florida Climate Survey also revealed strong support in the state for increasing renewable energy use and teaching climate science in K-12 classrooms. The survey is the 11th conducted by the FAU Center for Environmental Studies ...

LOS ANGELES – Oct. 15, 2024 – Stand Up To Cancer® (SU2C) today announced grants to several teams of leading cancer investigators in support of cutting-edge research in a variety of cancers including head and neck, pediatric, pancreatic, breast, rectal and gastro-esophageal cancers, as well as research focused on how the microbiome communicates with the immune system. “These new grants emphasize SU2C’s support of collaborative, trailblazing research that pushes the field forward and helps people impacted by some of the most common or difficult-to-treat cancers,” said Julian Adams, Ph.D., president and CEO of SU2C. “With an emphasis on answering ...

CLEVELAND—With a new four-year, $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, researchers at Case Western Reserve University are investigating a new approach to treat Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in military Veterans.   AML is the most common form of blood cancer in adults, and many patients suffer relapses—especially Veterans, due to exposure to harmful chemicals and radiation during active duty, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. There is no effective treatment for AML and, according to the National Institutes of Health, half of treated patients suffer a relapse after therapy—mainly  ...

Zeuthen, Germany – On 14 October 2024, the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), along with hosting partners and shareholders Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, celebrated the official inauguration of the Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) on the DESY campus in Zeuthen, Germany. The ceremony, chaired by Prof. Christian Stegmann, Head of DESY Zeuthen, was opened by Mario Brandenburg, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and Tobias Dünow, State Secretary at ...

Toronto, ON (October 14, 2024) – JMIR Publications is proud to announce that Gunther Eysenbach, founder, CEO and executive editor, has once again been named the #1 most cited researcher in the subfield of medical informatics by Stanford/Elsevier’s Top 2% Scientists rankings. This marks the fifth consecutive year that Dr Eysenbach has secured this prestigious position, reaffirming his status as a leading authority and driving force in the field. He is also ranked #36 in the Top 100 Scientists in Information & Communication ...

Dr. Levent Beker from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Koç University, once again received European Research Council (ERC) support for his scientific research that focuses on improving the quality of our daily lives.  His previous project on an implant that can detect signs of heart failure and degrade in the body without surgery was granted €2.5 million Starting Grant from the ERC. Last year, his research on a wireless micro sensor that enables real-time monitoring of food spoilage at supermarkets, was published in Nature FoodMagazine. Currently leading the Bio-integrated ...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced the winners of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology (RADx® Tech) for Maternal Health Challenge, an $8 million prize competition to encourage development of postpartum maternal health diagnostics for use in regions that have limited access to maternity care. The eight winning teams developed home-based and point-of-care diagnostics, wearables and other accessible technologies to improve postpartum health outcomes during the period when most maternal deaths occur—up to one year after delivery or the end of ...

October 15, 2024 – The American Pediatric Society (APS) and the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR) are pleased to announce Cynthia F. Bearer, MD, PhD, as the 2025 Mary Ellen Avery Neonatal Research Award recipient. This award honors a pediatric investigator who has made important contributions to neonatal health through basic or translational research. Dr. Bearer is the William & Lois Briggs Chair of Neonatology and Chief, Division of Neonatology, Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics & Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University. ...

A pre-registered survey of nearly 10,000 Americans shows that delays in declaring the winners of elections cause distrust in the electoral process, but that reassuring voters before polls close that delays are normal can prevent this distrust from taking root. National elections in the United States were not definitively settled for days after election day in 2020 and 2022. There are legitimate reasons for such delays, including state rules about when counting can commence and laws about whether mailed ballots postmarked on election day must be counted. However, delayed results ...

The lack of air-quality monitoring capabilities across the U.S. affects the health of millions of people and disproportionately impacts minority and low socioeconomic-status communities, say researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Motivated by a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard for air pollution, the team employed a model for fine-scale air pollution mapping using real-world data, and it indicates there is an urgent need to address gaps in the agency’s monitoring ...