Aditya Johri, Professor, Information Sciences and Technology; Khondkar Islam, Professor, Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies, Information Sciences and Technology; and Vivian Motti, Associate Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, are set to receive $299,486 from the National Science Foundation for the project: "EAGER: Education DCL: An Embedded Case Study Approach for Broadening Students' Mindset for Ethical and Responsible Cybersecurity in AI."  Using prior research on situated learning and perspectival thinking, the project team will create a series of four ...

Ruixin Yang, Associate Professor, Geography and Geoinformation Science/Assistant Director, Center for Earth Observing Spatial Research (CEOSR), received $8,000 from the International Food Policy Research Institute for the project: "Climate Risk Profile Studies For Africa." Yang is producing hazard maps by major crops and by seasons. He is conducting an extensive review of existing hazard development methods employed by the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Yang is also developing a Python program that focuses on mapping and identifying ...

Sam Lebovic, Professor, History, received funding for: "Visiting Research Scholarship at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University."  His project will focus on the law and politics of public employee speech, focusing particularly on how a modern bureaucratized American government should manage the speech of its employees while balancing competing democratic values. The project will explore such problems as academic freedom, administrative law, public sector employment law, transparency, and whistleblowing regulation. It will seek to generate new understandings of legal ...

The Pandemic-related Traumatic Stress Scale (PTSS) can be used to effectively measure stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic and identify children and adults with higher levels of stress who may need additional mental health support, according to a new study funded by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO) at the National Institutes of Health. The study included 17,830 children and adults from 47 ECHO Cohort study sites representing all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. Researchers split the sample into four groups ...

Dr. Dragomir Milovanovic, a neuroscientist at DZNE’s Berlin site, has been awarded an European Research Council (ERC) “Starting Grant” worth 1.5 million euros to investigate biophysical phenomena relevant to brain diseases in a groundbreaking research project. Ultimately, the goal is to better understand the behavior of aberrant protein inclusions in neurodegenerative diseases. Human cells are complex entities comprising proteins, lipids and a wide number of other molecular spieces, some of them forming organized compartments, while others virtually float around. “The cell interior ...

Over the past few decades, algae have been slowly edging corals out of their native reefs across the globe by blocking sunlight, wearing the corals down physically, and producing harmful chemicals. But in recent years, a new type of algal threat has surfaced in tropical regions like the Caribbean—one that spreads quickly and forms a crust on top of coral and sponges, suffocating the organisms underneath and preventing them from regrowing. In an article publishing in the journal Current Biology on November 6, a team of marine biologists report that peyssonnelioid alga crusts, or PACs, ...

University of Oxford news release Strict embargo until Monday, 6 November, 2023.  11.00 (ET) or 16.00 (GMT)   Domestic cats introduced from the Near East and wildcats native to Europe did not mix until the 1960s, despite being exposed to each other for 2,000 years, according to two research papers published today in Current Biology. An international team has found new archaeological and genetic evidence which transforms our understanding of the history of cats in Europe. The team sequenced and analysed both wild and domestic cats, including ...

This huge step forward in understanding how neurons communicate through extremely short proteins called neuropeptides will help scientists understand how our emotions and mental states are controlled, as well as widespread neuropsychiatric conditions like eating disorders, OCD and PSTD.   The map, which details 31,479 neuropeptide interactions between the worm’s 302 neurons, shows where each neuropeptide, as well as each receptor for those peptides, acts in the animal’s nervous system. Neuropeptides allow communication between neurons that are not immediately ...

Reykjavik 6. November 2023. Epidemiology and Genetics of Clonal Hematopoiesis, a Premalignant Hematopoietic Stem Cell Condition A comprehensive new study from deCODE genetics, a subsidiary of Amgen, published today in Nature Genetics, provides insights into the epidemiology and somatic and germline genetics of clonal hematopoiesis. Whole genome sequence data from Iceland and the UK Biobank, combined with a unique somatic mutation Barcoding strategy, was used to investigate clonal hematopoiesis at the population scale. Clonal hematopoiesis is a condition that arises when a single clonal lineage ...

About The Study: In this study of 185 women with breast cancer, high neighborhood deprivation was associated with differences in tissue DNA methylation and gene expression among Black women. These findings suggest that continued investment in public health interventions and policy changes at the neighborhood level may help to remedy biological alterations that could make minoritized populations more susceptible to chronic diseases.  Authors: Stefan Ambs, Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, ...

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 6, 2023 — Agriculture is one of the hardest human activities to decarbonize; people must eat, but the land-use practices associated with growing crops account for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions evaluate a new solution to this problem, one that eliminates farms altogether. In a study published today in Nature Sustainability, the UCI-led team of scientists assess the potential for widescale synthetic production of dietary fats through chemical and biological processes. The raw materials for this method are the same as those used by ...

Keeping an eye on the regions when it comes to climate change Up to now, the results of climate simulations have sometimes contradicted the analysis of climate traces from the past. A team led by the physicist Thomas Laepple from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam and the climatologist Kira Rehfeld from the University of Tübingen has therefore brought together experts in climate models and climate tracks to clarify how the discrepancies come about. The surprising result has now been published in the journal Nature Geoscience: in a way, both sides ...

BOSTON – In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, effectively ending 50 years of federal protections to abortion care. As of October 2023, twenty-six states have since enacted laws to ban or restrict abortion access, with 14 states completely banning the procedure. Today, an estimated 25 million American women of childbearing age, or about one third of women ages 15 to 45, live in areas where abortion care is severely restricted. Historically, many states were able to restrict access to abortion even before 2022 through Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws; these laws decrease ...

Multiple sclerosis patients whose blood tests reveal elevated NfL, a biomarker of nerve damage, could see worsening disability one to two years later, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers at UC San Francisco.     The study is the first to quantify the timeframe preceding disability worsening in which injury to the central nervous system takes place, said co-first author Ahmed Abdelhak, MD, of the UCSF Department of Neurology and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences.    Almost 1 million Americans ...

Article in Nature Communications demonstrates that with 96% sensitivity, AI diagnostic MSIntuit™ CRC can  rule  out  almost  half  of  the  MSS population of colorectal cancer patients unlikely to respond to checkpoint inhibitor therapy from additional screening. Such AI-enabled solutions have the potential to improve lab efficiency, addressing global pathology shortages and reducing testing burden to match the right patients to the right therapies.  Paris and New York., 6 Nov 2023 – In a peer-reviewed study published today in Nature Communications, a team of scientists ...

New research shows that European food consumption draws unnecessarily excessively on global resources, which is why researchers are calling for political action. Many of the foods that are consumed in Europe are produced in countries outside Europe. Food loss – and waste later in the chain, (read more on waste terms below) – occurs along the food supply chain, from the primary agricultural sector in Europe or rest of the world, until it feeds mouths in Europe. “Halving Europe’s food loss and waste, together with a redistribution of global food resources, could solve the challenges of food shortages in the ...

A new virtual brain bank spanning five Chicago academic medical centers and led by University of Illinois Chicago will create a powerful new resource for clinical care and research on epilepsy, brain tumors and neurological disorders.  A $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will create a network of brain tissue research at UIC, Northwestern University, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Rush University and University of Chicago. The institutions will utilize a data platform developed at UIC called INTUITION that combines tissue data with clinical, functional, genetic and 3D imaging information to assist clinicians treating patients and help researchers better understand ...

Interaction between machines and humans is paramount to the development of the new technologies of the metaverse, which are designed to augment the human experience through cloud computing and extended reality (XR). Graphene, a two-dimensional carbon material, has emerged as an ideal candidate for wearable sensor technology, paving the way for a new era of seamless human-machine interaction (HMI).   A team of material scientists led by Tian-Ling Ren from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China recently outlined the state of graphene-based HMI sensor technology ...

Fatty liver diseases (FLD) have become a significant health concern worldwide, affecting millions. The two most common types of FLD are non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and alcoholic-associated liver disease (ALD). NAFLD is associated with obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome, while ALD is caused by excessive alcohol consumption. Both NAFLD and ALD can progress to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and, ultimately, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a primary liver cancer with a poor prognosis. Significant ...

Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) are chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) that affect the gastrointestinal tract. In recent decades, there have been significant advances in the understanding of IBD pathophysiology and the development of new treatments. The International Organisation for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IOIBD) developed the Selecting Therapeutic Targets in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (STRIDE) programs, which recommend specific treatment goals for UC and CD in children ...

  - A multicenter study of the MD Anderson, Korea University, Yonsei University, and other institutions - Establishing subtypes of gastric cancer classification to lay the foundation of personalized treatment   Professor Sang Cheul Oh of the Division of Oncology/Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine, Korea University College of Medicine, Professor Sang‑Hee Kang of the Department of Surgery, Korea University’s Guro Hospital, and Professor Sun Young Yim of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Korea University College of Medicine announced a new genetic classification system ...

ABSTRACTS: 1534, 777, 1328, 1526, 1330, 545 HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recent basic, translational, and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. This special edition features oral presentations from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 38th Annual Meeting focused on scientific advances and breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy from MD Anderson-led studies. Highlights include fecal microbiome transplants ...

LAWRENCE — The story of Ekgmowechashala, the final primate to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens or Clovis people, reads like a spaghetti western: A grizzled and mysterious loner, against the odds, ekes out an existence on the American Plains. Except this tale unfolded about 30 million years ago, just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition during which North America saw great cooling and drying, making the continent less hospitable to warmth-loving primates. Today, paleontologists from the University ...

First reported in 2015, tar spot is an emerging disease on corn that has rapidly spread across the United States and Canada, causing tremendous yield loss estimated at $1.2 billion in 2021 alone. Tar spot gets its name from its iconic symptoms that resemble the splatter of “tar” on corn leaves, but these spots are in fact brown lesions formed by the fungal pathogen Phyllachora maydis. This destructive pathogen is challenging to research because it cannot survive outside its plant host; therefore, little information is currently known about the mechanisms that contribute to its disease cycle including spore formation, reproduction, and plant ...

Open wounds, whether caused by accidents or from medical procedures like surgery, require proper management to speed up healing and prevent infections. While sutures and staples are common wound closure methods, they can cause secondary tissue injuries, potentially leaking fluids and gases and requiring anesthetics. Tissue adhesive glues are a more attractive alternative but often suffer from toxicity and weak adhesion. Fortunately, tissue adhesive patches offer an innovative solution. They allow precise control of adhesion and mechanical properties through adjustable polymeric compositions. These patches can also deliver ...