A new type of blood test using lipids could make it easier to identify children at risk of complications around obesity including type two diabetes, liver and heart disease, say scientists. A new study from King’s College London published in Nature Medicine reveals a new relationship between lipids and diseases impacting  metabolism in children, which could serve as an early warning system for conditions like liver disease. Using machines that test blood plasma in babies that already exist in hospitals, the researchers suggest this ...

Iron is a micronutrient indispensable for life, enabling processes such as respiration, photosynthesis, and DNA synthesis. Iron availability is often a limiting resource in today’s oceans, which means that increasing the flow of iron into them can increase the amount of carbon fixed by phytoplankton, with consequences for the global climate. Iron ends up in oceans and terrestrial ecosystems through rivers, melting glaciers, hydrothermal activity, and especially wind. But not all its chemical forms are ‘bioreactive’, that is, available for organisms ...

As society learns to live with COVID-19, research on the disease and its complications remains important. Thus, an Osaka Metropolitan University team has pored through data to understand the incidence in Japan of COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA), a severe invasive fungal infection of the lungs. Few studies have been conducted on CAPA in Japan, but reports from overseas put the incidence between 3.8% and 35%. Using Japanese administrative claims data, Graduate School of Medicine Lecturer Waki Imoto, graduate student Mr. Yasutaka Ihara, Professor Ayumi Shintani, ...

FOR MORE INFORMATION Michael San Filippo Senior Media Relations Manager American Veterinary Medical Association Cell/Text: 847-732-6194 msanfilippo@avma.org     Cooler heads prevail: New research reveals best way to prevent dogs from overheating   (SCHAUMBURG, Illinois) September 19, 2024— As temperatures continue to soar across the country, a simple yet innovative technique could be the key to keeping dogs safe from heat-related illnesses.   New research published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) reveals that teaching dogs ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Nearly 6,000 opioid-related overdose deaths occurred in California in 2021, many due to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. To address the crisis, a team of researchers in the School of Medicine, or SOM, at the University of California, Riverside, plans to develop and implement a curriculum that offers education on substance use disorders to medical students early and throughout their education. To facilitate the development of the curriculum, the team has been awarded a grant of $900,000 from the Substance Abuse ...

Fussy eating is mainly influenced by genes and is a stable trait lasting from toddlerhood to early adolescence, finds a new study led by researchers from UCL (University College London), King’s College London and the University of Leeds. The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry and funded by the UK mental health charity MQ Mental Health Research, compared survey results of parents with identical or non-identical twins in England and Wales from the ages of 16 months to 13 years. The ...

Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society is widely recognized as a leading voice in the history of science. George Sarton founded the journal in 1912, and two years later the History of Science Society (HSS) was formed to advance the journal’s mission and centralize the nascent discipline. The September 2024 issue of Isis pays tribute to the centennial anniversary of the HSS with a collection of articles that delve into the rich history of the society and its publications. In their introduction to the issue, editors Alexandra Hui and Matthew Lavine write that the issue can be seen as “a love letter of sorts: to the Isis readership, ...

A pioneering study presented today at ECTRIMS 2024 has identified critical biomarkers that can predict disability worsening in multiple sclerosis (MS). The breakthrough research has the potential to transform treatment strategies for millions of MS patients worldwide, paving the way for more personalised and effective treatment plans.1 In this multicentre observational study, conducted across 13 hospitals in Spain and Italy, Dr. Enric Monreal and his team found that elevated serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) levels—a protein indicating nerve cell damage—at the onset of MS can predict both relapse-associated worsening (RAW) and progression independent ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — A new study from researchers at MIT and Penn State University reveals that if large language models were to be used in home surveillance, they could recommend calling the police even when surveillance videos show no criminal activity. In addition, the models the researchers studied were inconsistent in which videos they flagged for police intervention. For instance, a model might flag one video that shows a vehicle break-in but not flag another video that shows a similar activity. Models often disagreed with one another over whether to call the police ...

The beliefs we hold develop from a complex dance between our internal and external lives. Our personal-level cognition and our relationships with others work in concert to shape our views of the world and influence how likely we are to update those views when we encounter new information. In the past, these two levels of belief have been studied largely in isolation: psychologists have modeled the individual-level cognitive processes while researchers in fields from computational social science to statistical physics have offered insights ...

In an article published in JAMA Network Open, researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP) report on a study involving 774 men and women who followed a vegan diet in Brazil. Their findings show that on average the participants consumed the recommended amount of proteins and essential amino acids, and that their diet consisted largely of unprocessed and minimally processed foods. However, participants who consumed proportionally lower levels of industrialized products such as protein supplements and textured soy protein were more likely to exhibit inadequate ...

An outstanding $21 million philanthropic investment will establish a pioneering research centre to advance precision diagnosis for diseases that affect millions of Australians. The Colonial Foundation Diagnostics Centre will use cutting-edge ‘spatial biology’ technologies to deliver enhanced diagnosis and, in turn, personalised care for patients with inflammatory diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. The centre, co-led by WEHI and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and funded by the Colonial Foundation, builds on an existing partnership that has pioneered potential new tests for detecting early-stage dementia. At a glance   A $21 million ...

Metal production is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions, with iron production emitting two tons of CO2 for every ton of metal produced, and nickel production emitting 14 tons of CO2 per ton and even more, depending on the ore used. These metals form the foundation of alloys that have a low thermal expansion, called Invar. They are critical for the aerospace, cryogenic transport, energy and precision instrument sectors. Recognizing the environmental toll, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat) have now developed a new method to produce Invar alloys without emitting ...

Findings from the international FORT-2 clinical trial showed that a combination treatment including immunotherapy is safe and tolerable in patients with locally advanced or metastatic bladder cancer. The results, which were recently published in JAMA Oncology, show potential to broaden the number of patients with bladder cancer who could benefit from immunotherapy, an approach that harnesses a patient's own immune system to fight cancer. “The major problem with immunotherapy was it works great for some patients with ...

Studies by researchers at UTHealth Houston seeking to understand the underlying pathology of Alzheimer’s disease in order to discover new pathways to treatment have earned multiple awards totaling $3.5 million from the Texas Alzheimer’s Research and Care Consortium (TARCC). A state-funded organization composed of 11 medical schools across the state, the goal of the TARCC is to fund Alzheimer’s-related projects within the member institutions and promote collaborative efforts. Rodrigo Morales, PhD, professor of neurology with McGovern Medical ...

University of Tennessee Extension and UT AgResearch scientists have been awarded part of a nearly $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study ways to use automation and robotics to address the labor shortage in the nursery crops industry. Growing plants in a nursery is highly dependent on manual labor, making this industry particularly prone to worker shortages. An increasingly scarce workforce is limiting production, economic development and prosperity in the rural communicates where nurseries ...

Captive tigers in the United States outnumber those living in the wild. The World Wildlife Federation estimates around 5,000 of the big cats reside in the U.S., mostly owned by private citizens. The health of this population is a genetic mystery for conservation groups and researchers interested in how the captive tigers could help stabilize or restore wild tiger populations. Are the privately owned animals just like tigers in the wild, or do they reflect characteristics popular in the illegal trade? Are they a hodgepodge of wild tiger ancestry, ...

UTHealth Houston and The Ocean Corporation are collaborating on UTHealth Houston’s Space Medicine Training Fellowship program, which now includes a two-week intensive training focused on hyperbaric technologies and analog environments akin to those astronauts experience during extravehicular activities (EVAs), or space walks. The training will enhance the hands-on learning experience of fellows in the Space Medicine Fellowship program, giving them a deeper understanding of physiological and medical challenges encountered in extreme environments. “Integrating ...

By cleverly applying a computational technique, scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding the ‘pseudogap,’ a long-standing puzzle in quantum physics with close ties to superconductivity. The discovery, presented in the September 20 issue of Science, will help scientists in their quest for room-temperature superconductivity, a holy grail of condensed matter physics that would enable lossless power transmission, faster MRI machines and superfast levitating trains. Certain materials involving copper and oxygen display superconductivity (where electricity flows without resistance) at relatively high — but still frigid — temperatures below ...

A new way of looking at tooth enamel could give scientists a path to deeper understanding of the health of human populations, from the ancient to the modern. The method, published this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science, examines two immune proteins found embedded in human tooth enamel: immunoglobulin G, an antibody that fights infection, and C-reactive protein, which is present during inflammation in the body. “These proteins are present in tooth enamel, and they are something we can use to study the ...

Researchers discovered a drug that safely and effectively helped cancer patients when they suffered from cachexia (ku-KEK-see-uh), a common condition related to cancer that involves weight loss and muscle wasting. The results of the randomized phase 2 clinical trial, which included187 individuals who experienced cachexia with lung, pancreatic, or colorectal cancer, were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on Sept. 14, 2024. Richard Dunne, MD, MS, a Wilmot Cancer Institute oncologist and cachexia expert was part of the large group of investigators ...

Blanca Barquera's investigation into the energy-generating processes of Bacteroides, the most abundant member of the gut microbiome, and their impact on our well-being holds the promise of significant advancements in human health. Barquera is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Chemical Biology. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that an unhealthy gut is more than just a source of digestive troubles. A healthy ...

Jeffrey Elam, senior chemist, Distinguished Fellow, and founder of the atomic layer deposition (ALD) research program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, was named as a fellow of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), which focuses on advancing theory and practice at the forefront of electrochemical and solid-state science and technology. Elam, who has been with the lab since 2002, has been a trailblazer in thin film coating science and technology for over 20 years, ...

Oregon Health & Science University researchers have found that despite legislation in 19 states requiring insurers to cover a 12-month supply of contraception, patients aren’t receiving a year’s worth of their prescription; most receive just three months or less. Their study recently published in the journal JAMA Health Forum shows that policies requiring coverage of a 12-month supply of short-acting hormonal contraception — most commonly the birth control pill — have not been fully implemented, resulting in no substantial increases nationally in year-long prescription orders. This leaves many patients at an increased risk for unintended ...

All living organisms emit a low level of light radiation, but the origin and function of these 'biophotons' are not yet fully understood. An international team of physicists, funded by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, has proposed a new approach for investigating this phenomenon based on statistical analyses of this emission. Their aim is to test whether biophotons can play a role in the transport of information within and between living organisms, and whether monitoring biophotons could contribute to the development of medical techniques for the early diagnosis of various diseases. Their analyses of the measurements of the faint glow emitted by lentil ...