DALLAS, April 15, 2025 — Ferhaan Ahmad, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA, is the new editor-in-chief of Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Heart Association, effective with the journal’s April issue, published today. Ahmad is the founding director of the Cardiovascular Genomics Program and associate professor of internal medicine-cardiovascular medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa. He takes the helm leading Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine from Kiran Musunuru, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H, FAHA, who served as interim editor-in-chief ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – A "remarkable" transformation is underway in American religious life, new Cornell-led research finds: Large numbers are leaving organized religion – not in favor of secular rationality, but to pursue spirituality in ways that better align with their individual values. This reimagining of religion outside traditional institutions fits within broader social changes that have prioritized individual fulfilment and “finding” oneself, including shifting views about gender and sexuality and the rise of the internet. Spanning political views, it also reflects a revolt against ...

A Johns Hopkins Medicine-led analysis of medical information gathered on a diverse group of almost 250,000 people over four years has significantly clarified the link between the “exclusive” use of e-cigarettes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as high blood pressure in a sub-group of adults 30 to 70 years of age.     The findings, supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and published in the March. 15 edition of Nicotine & Tobacco Research, underscore the potential risks of e-cigarette ...

On January 17, 2025, Professor ZHANG Zhen’s team at the Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), reported a solid-state proton gating membrane with an ultrahigh gating ratio of 5,740, surpassing existing technologies. The study was published in Nature Communications. Biological ion channels exhibit strong gating effects due to their zero-current closed state. However, artificial nanochannels often demonstrate weaker gating capabilities because larger nanopores cannot fully block ion transport when in a closed ...

Liver cancer can arise spontaneously from healthy liver tissue. Recently, however, researchers have discovered an increasing correlation between some liver cancers and non-viral chronic liver disease (CLD). One liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is associated with CLD in about 15–25% of cases. While increasing awareness and screening of cancers has improved the ability to detect liver cancer at earlier stages when it is more effectively treated, cancer prevention is always a primary goal of both healthcare providers and biomedical researchers. The increasing prevalence of ...

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2025 – With millions of dollars at stake across tournaments and more than 45 million regular annual participants, bowling continues to reign as a top sport in the U.S. A unified model that predicts how a bowling ball behaves down the lane, however, remains elusive. In AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Princeton, MIT, the University of New Mexico, Loughborough University, and Swarthmore College share a model that identifies the optimal location for bowling ball placement. Employing a system of ...

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2025 – Surround-sound speakers can immerse you in a multimedia experience, but what if there was a speaker that could completely re-create a three-dimensional soundscape? The AudioDome is more than just a loudspeaker arrangement — it’s a dome of speakers that can create an immersive sound experience that reproduces sound sources at any location when the listener is placed in the middle. In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of older women with screen-detected estrogen receptor–positive or human epidermal growth factor receptor 2–negative breast cancer, prior screening mammography was associated with earlier stage at breast cancer diagnosis and lower breast cancer mortality. These findings support the potential for routine screening to improve breast cancer outcomes. As with all observational studies, this study is limited by the potential effects of other differences between the screening and nonscreening groups. Corresponding Author: To contact the ...

Researchers at Pitt have produced the most detailed image to date of a bacteriophage–phage for short–that has allowed them to see for the first time the structural makeup of the part of the phage that directly attaches to its target Mycobacterium cell. “Now you've got like a spec sheet for going in and designing phages so that they’ll bind to different kinds of cells,” said Graham Hatfull, the Eberly Family Professor of Biotechnology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. That’s important because of what a phage, which is a kind of virus, does after it binds to a bacterial cell: it pierces a hole in the cell membrane and injects ...

University of Virginia researcher Natasha D. Sheybani, PhD, has received $5.5 million from the federal Department of Defense to support her cutting-edge efforts to use focused sound waves to improve our immune system’s ability to battle breast cancer. Sheybani, the research director of UVA’s Focused Ultrasound Cancer Immunotherapy Center, was the only scientist in the nation selected to receive a Breast Cancer Research Program Era of Hope Scholar Award in the latest funding round; she is UVA’s first recipient of the award. She will use the grant to advance her research into the potential of focused ultrasound to improve the safety, ...

“Our results indicate a strong association between certain genotypes of the SNP -765 G>C of the PTGS2 gene and BPH.” BUFFALO, NY – April 15, 2025 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget, Volume 16, on April 4, 2025, titled “Association between two single nucleotide polymorphisms of the Prostaglandin-Endoperoxide Synthase 1 and 2 genes and cell proliferative prostatic diseases in Lebanon.” The team of researchers led by first author Brock J. Sheehan and corresponding author Ruhul H. Kuddus, from Utah Valley University, discovered that a specific genetic variation ...

Teoxane reinforces its commitment to scientific innovation with the publication of a new study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery – Global Open, providing robust preclinical and clinical evidence on the safety, biocompatibility, and performance of RHA®4* in midface augmentation. The study confirms that RHA®4[1], a resilient hyaluronic acid filler designed for dynamic facial areas[2],[3], integrates harmoniously within subcutaneous adipose tissue, preserving its natural biomechanics while delivering effective volume restoration. ...

Herndon, VA, March 25, 2025 -- About two million people in the United States lack access to running water or indoor plumbing in their homes. Another 30 million people live where drinking water systems violate safety rules. Water privatization -- the transfer of public water systems ownership and/or management to private companies -- has been proposed as a potential solution to provide more Americans with safe, clean drinking water. But opponents argue that private companies may prioritize profits over public needs. To investigate how ...

Fraud is widespread in the United States and increasingly driven by technology. For example, 93% of credit card fraud now involves remote account access, not physical theft. In 2023, fraud losses surpassed $10 billion for the first time. The financial toll is staggering: credit card fraud costs $5 billion annually, affecting 60% of U.S. cardholders, while identity theft resulted in $16.4 billion in losses in 2021. Medicare fraud costs $60 billion each year, and government losses range from $233 billion to $521 billion annually, with improper payments totaling $2.7 trillion since 2003. Machine learning plays a critical ...

A research paper by scientists at Tianjin University presented an earthworm-inspired multimodal pneumatic continuous soft robot enhanced by wire-winding transmission. The research paper, published on Mar. 19, 2025 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, proposes an earthworm-inspired multimodal pneumatic continuous soft robot to simultaneously achieve multimodal motion and good motion performance. Using the derived overlapped continuous control law (DOCCL) and wire-winding transmission, the robot can achieve a maximum planar crawling speed that surpasses that of other robots of the same type by an order of magnitude. With ...

Humans have always lived by coasts and waterways, and thus these locations are rich with archeological sites. Natural and cultural resource management are conducted separately, despite the fact that climate change, sea level rise, and extreme weather threaten them both. Jayur Mehta and colleagues argue a synergy of both approaches is required to protect coastal archaeological landscapes. The authors used LiDAR digital elevation models, site location data, and NOAA sea level rise models to define ...

There are two species of streamertail hummingbirds on the island of Jamaica, West Indies—one with red-billed males (Trochilus polytmus) and the other with black-billed males (T. scitulus). This is a puzzling situation, as many evolutionary biologists have argued that avian speciation is unlikely to occur on small oceanic islands. Caroline Duffie Judy and colleagues investigated the hybrid zone that separates the two species, which is as narrow as 3.2 km. The authors analyzed 186 Trochilus specimens from 12 ...

PULLMAN, Wash.­­ -- Researchers at Washington State University have demonstrated a way to use corn protein to improve the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries, a finding that holds promise for expanding the use of the high-energy, lighter-weight batteries in electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and other applications. Lithium-sulfur batteries are lighter for the same amount of energy and more environmentally friendly than commonly used lithium-ion batteries, but their commercial adoption has been limited by technological hurdles that shorten their lifespan. The WSU team’s research, published in the Journal of Power Sources, ...

Mill Valley, CA – April 15, 2025 – SynGAP Research Fund (SRF), dba Cure SYNGAP1, the leading patient advocacy group dedicated to improving the lives of those affected by SYNGAP1-related disorders (SRD), today announced the appointment of Jaime Aranda, Steve Gore, Heather Mestemaker, and Brian Smith to its Board of Trustees, effective April 15, 2025. They will succeed outgoing Trustees Emily Barnes, Sydney Stelmaszek, and Stella Tavilla, whose terms conclude on April 14, 2025. Additionally, a seat previously held by Pavel Gerovich, who stepped ...

Materials that convert external stimuli into mechanical motion, known as actuators, play a crucial role in robotics, medical devices, and other advanced applications. Among them, photomechanical crystals deform in response to light, making them promising for lightweight and remotely controllable actuation. Their performance depends on factors such as molecular structures, crystal properties, and experimental conditions. A key performance indicator of these materials is the blocking force—the maximum force exerted when deformation is completely ...

Colorectal cancer (CRC), a type of cancer that affects the large intestine and rectum, is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The mutational landscape of CRC is well characterized, revealing key pathogenic genetic abnormalities that drive carcinogenesis (cancer development) and disease progression. Moreover, a step-wise colorectal carcinogenesis model has been proposed wherein normal epithelial cells transition to adenoma (non-cancerous tumor) and then to carcinoma (cancerous tumor) as they sequentially acquire genetic mutations. Mutations ...

Vision is one of the most complex functions of our brain and requires a seamless interaction between many different brain structures to decode shapes, colours, depths, and movements and turn them into a meaningful whole. Just like other brain functions, vision also depends on a balanced and controlled interaction between the chemical signals that "activate" and "brake" activity in the eye's cells – much like the accelerator and brake of a car. In research, the "brake" is known as GABA, which stands for gamma-aminobutyric ...

Barcelona, 15th April 2025. – Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers and has one of the lowest survival rates—only 10% after five years. One of the factors contributing to its aggressiveness is its tumor microenvironment, known as the stroma, which makes up the majority of the tumor mass and consists of a network of proteins and different non-tumor cells. Among these, fibroblasts play a key role, helping tumor cells to grow and increasing their resistance to drugs. Now, a study led by researchers from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS, ...

April 15, 2025 | Portland, Oregon—A new study in the journal Fisheries shows how a salmon-focused ecosystem protection strategy in the North Pacific can deliver meaningful results in the global drive to protect biodiversity. The approach, called the stronghold strategy, aims to proactively protect the world’s greatest remaining “strongholds”—a select group of salmon, steelhead, and trout systems that collectively comprise 119 distinct watersheds. According to Wild Salmon Center President & CEO Guido Rahr—lead author of the peer-reviewed study—salmonids center the strategy because they are both iconic and globally recognized ...

Researchers at the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology have discovered a promising strategy to improve treatment responses in multiple myeloma patients by blocking a protein that plays a key role in drug resistance. The study, published in Pharmacological Research, offers a potential new strategy to improve outcomes for patients whose disease has become less responsive to standard therapies. Multiple myeloma (MM) is a type of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow. Patients are often treated with dexamethasone, a synthetic glucocorticoid frequently used in the clinic to regulate immune responses and slow cancer growth. However, as the disease progresses, many patients develop ...