Washington, DC— As climate change warms the Earth, higher-latitude regions will be at greater risk for toxins produced by algal blooms, according to new research led by Carnegie’s Anna Michalak, Julian Merder, and Gang Zhao. Their findings, published in Nature Water, identify water temperatures of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius (68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit) as being at the greatest risk for developing dangerous levels of a common algae-produced toxin called microcystin.   Harmful algal blooms result when bodies of water get overloaded with nitrogen and phosphorus ...

The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) has released new literature-based recommendations related to breastfeeding in the setting of substance use and substance use disorder (SUD) treatments. The new clinical protocol is published in the peer-reviewed journal Breastfeeding Medicine. Click here to read the article now. Miriam Harris, MD and Elisha Wachman, MD, from Boston Medical Center, and coauthors, provide breastfeeding recommendations in the setting of non-prescribed opioid, stimulant, sedative-hypnotic, alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis use, and SUD treatments. They also offer guidance on the use of toxicology testing in breastfeeding ...

A new study leverages the NASA Exoplanet Archive and planetary system simulations to make narrowband SETI searches more efficient. October 23, 2023, Mountain View, CA -- In a new study published in the Astronomical Journal, researchers used the known population of exoplanets and extrapolated to the much larger, unknown population of exoplanets to set better thresholds for planetary effects on signals from ETIs (extraterrestrial intelligences). The prior recommendation for the threshold “drift rate” contribution, caused by a planet’s motion around its host star, was 200 nHz. In this work, lead ...

Lisbon, Portugal – 23 October, 2023 The International Society of Microbiota (ISM) is proud to present the 14th International Conference on Skin Ageing & Challenges 2023. This monumental event will unfold at the Altis Grand Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal, and virtually, on November 9-10, 2023. Skin ageing, a multifaceted issue combining both basic research, mechanistic, clinical aspects and health concerns, is gaining significant attention in the scientific community. This year’s conference promises to be a beacon of innovation, ...

Certain gut-dwelling fungi flourish in severe cases of COVID-19, amplifying the excessive inflammation that drives this disease while also causing long-lasting changes in the immune system, according to a new study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. This discovery identifies a group of patients who may benefit from specialized, but yet-to-be determined treatments. Utilizing patient samples and preclinical models, the research team determined that the growth of fungi in the intestinal ...

Before modern humans settled definitively in Europe, other human populations left Africa for Europe beginning approximately 60,000 years ago, albeit without settling for the long term. This was due to a major climatic crisis 40,000 years ago, combined with a super-eruption originating from the Phlegraean Fields volcanic area near current-day Naples, subsequently precipitating a decline in ancient European populations. To determine who the first modern humans to settle definitively in Europe were, a team led by CNRS scientists1 analysed the genome of two skull ...

Alem & Narayanan Advancing Infectious Disease Capabilities Through Biomedical Research Laboratory Core Support Farhang Alem, Interim Director of the Biomedical Research Laboratory, Institute for Biohealth Innovation, and Aarthi Narayanan, Professor, Biology, received funding for the project: "Advancing Infectious Disease Capabilities through BRL Core Support." As part of this project, Alem and Narayanan will: 1) implement a comprehensive BSL-3 facilities preventative maintenance and upgrade plan to ensure continuity of operations, compliance with federal regulations, and a safe and secure facility; 2) enhance safety ...

Ramseur To Receive Funding For APA Fellowship - APA Minority Fellowship Program (MFP)  Kevin Ramseur, II, a Mason doctoral student studying clinical psychology, is set to receive funding for: "APA Fellowship – APA Minority Fellowship Program (MFP)."  Ramseur will receive $27,144 from the American Psychological Association on a subaward from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This funding will begin in Oct. 2023 and will end in late Sept. 2024.  ### About George Mason University George Mason ...

Doebel Innovating Developmental Science With An Online, Scalable Meta-Science Platform For Investigating Cognitive Development During Early Childhood Sabine Doebel, Assistant Professor, Psychology, received $2,784 from the University of Texas at Dallas on a subaward from the National Science Foundation for: "Subaward Project GARDEN: Innovating Developmental Science with an Online, Scalable Meta-Science Platform for Investigating Cognitive Development During Early Childhood." Regarding the importance of the project, Doebel said, "Project GARDEN will leverage online methodologies to gather data from a large, ...

Debus-Sherrill Receives Supplemental Funds For Elevate Academy For Juvenile Providers Sara Debus-Sherrill, Senior Research Associate, Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!), received $153,424 from County of Alameda for: "Supplemental Funds for Elevate Academy for Juvenile Providers." This funding began in Aug. 2023 and will end in late June 2024. Debus-Sherrill said, "This project funds the development and delivery of a training academy for community-based organizations providing services to justice-involved youth in Alameda County, California." ### About George Mason University George ...

Parsa Studying Design Of Joint 3D Solid-State Learning Machines For Various Cognitive Use-Cases Maryam Parsa, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Collaborative Research: NCS-FR: DEJA-VU: Design of Joint 3D Solid-State Learning Machines for Various Cognitive Use-Cases." In this collaborative project, Parsa joins a team of faculty members from the University of Wisconsin Madison (Dr. Akhilesh Jaiswal), and the University of California Irvine (Dr. Babak Shahbaba and Dr. Norbert ...

Toronto, ON, October 23, 2023 – Infants of pregnant women who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy had lower risks of severe health outcomes, neonatal death, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission, according to a new study from researchers at ICES and the University of Toronto. Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study included more than 140,000 infants in Ontario, and also showed that newborn and six-month readmissions to the NICU did not increase in infants of mothers vaccinated during pregnancy. "Our results were consistent across the number of doses someone received during pregnancy, the trimester in which they were ...

About The Study: In this study of 142,000 live births in Ontario, Canada, maternal mRNA COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy was associated with lower risks of severe neonatal morbidity, neonatal death, and neonatal intensive care unit admission and no increase in neonatal readmission or hospital admission up to age six months, compared with no maternal COVID-19 vaccination before delivery.  Authors: Jeffrey C. Kwong, M.D., M.Sc., of ICES in Toronto, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.4499) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this study of 2,361 mother-child pairs followed up prenatally to child age of approximately two years, prenatal lead exposure was associated with an increased risk of cognitive developmental delay (CDD) in children, especially in those with a high genetic risk. These findings suggest that prenatal lead exposure and genetic background may jointly contribute to an increased risk of CDD for children and indicate the possibility for an integrated strategy to assess CDD risk and improve ...

An international team of researchers has provided valuable insights into the brain’s noradrenaline (NA) system, which has been a longtime target for medications to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, and anxiety. Equally important beyond the findings is the groundbreaking methodology that the researchers developed to record real-time chemical activity from standard clinical electrodes which are routinely implanted for epilepsy monitoring. Published online in the journal Current Biology on Monday (Oct. 23), the research not only provides new insights into the brain’s chemistry, which could have implications ...

Researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Chaoyang Hospital have developed a new "pseudo cell" formulation based on self-healing microcapsule-loading exosomes to treat diverse vitreoretinal diseases. The study was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on Oct. 23. Vitreoretinal diseases include a wide spectrum of vision-threatening disorders, which may cause severe irreversible vision loss. The efficacy of current treatments for vitreoretinal diseases in clinic is generally unsatisfactory and treatments often cause several side effects. Moreover, frequently repeated treatments ...

Scientists ran simulations on the UK’s national supercomputer to investigate ocean-driven melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet: how much is unavoidable and must be adapted to, and how much melting the international community still has control over through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Taking into account climate variability like El Niño, they found no significant difference between mid-range emissions scenarios and the most ambitious targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Even under a best-case scenario of 1.5°C global temperature rise, melting will increase three times faster than ...

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – In most people, every cell in their body contains the same genetic information. However, sometimes people can have two or more genetically different sets of cells. This usually happens during fetal development and is known as mosaicism. Sometimes one of those groups of cells has genetic changes that can cause diseases or disorders. Neurologists, neurosurgeons and genomics experts have been working together to test for mosaicism in brain tissues resected during epilepsy surgery. Research has shown that mosaicism in the brain is a significant contributor to epilepsy. In a new study, recently published in Nature ...

About The Study: In a clinical trial that included 8,920 participants, a noninvasive, multitarget stool RNA test (ColoSense) for colorectal cancer screening showed high sensitivity for colorectal neoplasia (colorectal cancer and advanced adenoma) with significant improvement in sensitivity relative to the fecal immunochemical test. Specificity for no lesions on colonoscopy was comparable to existing molecular diagnostic tests.  Authors: Erica K. Barnell, M.D., Ph.D., of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is the corresponding author. To access ...

What if your house plant could tell you your water isn’t safe? Scientists are closer to realizing this vision, having successfully engineered a plant to turn beet red in the presence of a banned, toxic pesticide.  To achieve this, UC Riverside researchers had to solve an engineering puzzle: how to enable a plant to sense and react to a chemical in the environment without damaging its ability to function normally in all other respects.  “The biggest piece here is we’ve created an environmental sensor without modifying ...

School policies that require students with COVID-19 to stay out of the classroom for five days are more than sufficient. That’s because children infected with the Omicron variant remained infectious for a median time of three days after testing positive for the virus, according to a study by the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and Stanford University. “We're basically saying five days is more than sufficient; public-health and education leaders may consider shorter durations,” said co-author Neeraj ...

A study led by UC San Francisco has found that people who are experiencing homelessness have a 16-fold higher rate of sudden death from heart attacks, as well as other causes.  The study focused on San Francisco County, which has one of the nation’s highest concentrations of homeless people. It found that the rate of sudden cardiac death was 7 times higher than the general population.   Some of these deaths may have been prevented with defibrillators and other public policy measures to improve health in this vulnerable population, according to the authors. The paper published ...

A new study, using a first-of-its-kind approach to analyze satellite imagery from boreal forests over the last three decades, found that fire may be changing the face of the region in a way researchers did not previously anticipate.  Historically, fires in North American boreal forests have led to coniferous trees being supplanted by deciduous trees, which are faster growing, take up more carbon and reflect more light, leading to cooling of the climate and decreased likelihood of fire.  The study, led by Northern Arizona University and published today in Nature Climate Change, found that, surprisingly, while forests do become more deciduous, ...

They number in the thousands, light striking the phalanx of lenses arrayed on a face in geometric pattern, the beams refracting through transparent mounds no wider than a hair. A fly’s eye boasts roughly 4,000 microscopic lenses, a honeybee’s up to twice that many. These lenses, though, belong not to a compound eye but to polydimethylsiloxane — a flexible polymer long ranking as a favored playground of Nebraska’s Stephen Morin and his band of fellow chemists. With the aid of engineers Ruiguo Yang and Grayson Minnick, Morin’s team can now arrange and ...

A team of researchers has developed a software tool called DANGER (Deleterious and ANticipatable Guides Evaluated by RNA-sequencing) analysis that provides a way for the safer design of genome editing in all organisms with a transcriptome. For about a decade, researchers have used the CRISPR technology for genome editing. However, there are some challenges in the use of CRISPR. The DANGER analysis overcomes these challenges and allows researchers to perform safer on- and off-target assessments without a reference genome. It holds the potential for applications in medicine, agriculture, and biological research. Their ...