WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 7, 2023 –  Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia that affects more than 6.5 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. To find effective treatments and slow the progression of this debilitating disease, researchers have made much progress in developing new drugs that target beta-amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Beta-amyloid plaques are accumulations of brain protein fragments, which can impact cognition. However, these recent drugs have only yielded modest results. Now, ...

A star like our own Sun in a nearby galaxy is gradually being eaten away by a small but ravenous black hole, losing the equivalent mass of three Earths every time it passes close. The discovery by University of Leicester astronomers is reported today (7 September) in Nature Astronomy and provides a ‘missing link’ in our knowledge of black holes disrupting orbiting stars. It suggests a whole menagerie of stars in the process of being consumed that still lie undiscovered. The team was supported by the UK Space Agency and the UK Science and technology Facilities Council (STFC). The astronomers were alerted to ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- RNA vaccines against Covid-19 have proven effective at reducing the severity of disease. However, a team of researchers at MIT is working on making them even better. By tweaking the design of the vaccines, the researchers showed that they could generate Covid-19 RNA vaccines that produce a stronger immune response, at a lower dose, in mice. Adjuvants are molecules commonly used to increase the immune response to vaccines, but they haven’t yet been used in RNA vaccines.  In this study, the MIT researchers engineered both the nanoparticles used to deliver the Covid-19 antigen, and the antigen itself, to boost the immune response, ...

Patescibacteria are a group of puzzling, tiny microbes whose manner of staying alive has been difficult to fathom. Scientists can cultivate only a few types, yet these bacteria are a diverse group found in many environments. The few types of Patescibacteria that researchers can grow in the lab reside on the cell surfaces of another, larger host microbe. Patescibacteria in general lack the genes required to make many molecules necessary for life, such as the amino acids that make up proteins, the fatty acids that form membranes, and the nucleotides in DNA. This has led researchers ...

A vital component of the batteries at the heart of electric vehicles and grid energy storage, lithium is key to a clean energy future. But producing the silvery-white metal comes with significant environmental costs. Among them is the vast amount of land and time needed to extract lithium from briny water, with large operations running into the dozens of square miles and often requiring over a year to begin production. Now, researchers at Princeton have developed an extraction technique that slashes the amount of land and time needed for lithium production. The researchers say their system ...

New research highlights that genetic background can affect individual responses to GLP-1R agonist drugs.   Researchers reveal for the first time that high blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes can play a causal role in lung disorders.   The study sheds light on the role of the digestive system, including the small intestine, ileum, and colon, in controlling blood sugar levels.   This is the largest-ever study into the genetic basis of random "round-the-clock" blood sugar levels.  Groundbreaking research published today in Nature Genetics describes the largest-ever study into the genetics of random "round-the-clock" ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University research has uncovered a possible clue as to why glaciers that terminate at the sea are retreating at unprecedented rates: the bursting of tiny, pressurized bubbles in underwater ice. Published today in Nature Geoscience, the study shows that glacier ice, characterized by pockets of pressurized air, melts much more quickly than the bubble-free sea ice or manufactured ice typically used to research melt rates at the ocean-ice interface of tidewater glaciers. Tidewater glaciers are rapidly retreating, the authors say, resulting in ice mass loss in Greenland, the Antarctic Peninsula and other glacierized regions around the globe. “We ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) show that the protein involved in Parkinson’s disease, α-synuclein, can propagate through the lymphatic system of the brain before it aggregates   Tokyo, Japan – In many neurodegenerative disorders, abnormal proteins progressively aggregate and propagate in the brain. But what comes first, aggregation or propagation? Researchers from Japan share some new insights about the mechanism involved in Parkinson’s disease.   In a study published ...

A new study from the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University found that the extinction of large prey, upon which human nutrition had been based, compelled prehistoric humans to develop improved weapons for hunting small prey, thereby driving evolutionary adaptations. The study reviews the evolution of hunting weapons from wooden-tipped and stone-tipped spears, all the way to the sophisticated bow and arrow of a later era, correlating it with changes in prey size and human culture and physiology.   The researchers explain: "This study was designed to examine a broader unifying hypothesis, which we proposed in a previous paper published in ...

A review paper by scientists at the Chonnam National University summarized the recent research on bioprinting methods for fabricating bioengineered blood vessel models. The new review paper, published on Aug. 1 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, provided an overview on the 3D bioprinting methods for fabricating bioengineered blood vessel models and described possible advancements from tubular to vascular models. “3D bioprinting technology provides a more precise and effective means for investigating biological processes and developing new treatments than traditional 2D cell cultures. Therefore, it is a crucial tool ...

Hyperthermia is a potentially non-invasive cancer treatment that capitalizes on the heat intolerance of cancer cells, which are more sensitive than normal cells. In order to induce effective hyperthermia, it is necessary to apply the appropriate temperature according to the cell type, i.e., to comprehensively study the thermal toxicity of the cells, which requires accurate regulation of the culture temperature. Researchers from Keio University in Japan have developed a cell culture system with temperature ...

Research Highlights: More than half of adults (55%) with uncontrolled blood pressure who enrolled in a digital monitoring program that connected patients with clinical advice and included a bilingual app paired with at-home blood pressure monitors had controlled final blood pressure measurements after participating for least 90 days. Patients using the Spanish-language version of the digital monitoring program demonstrated more improvement in blood pressure control than patients who used the English-language version. Embargoed until 6:30a.m. CT/7:30 a.m. ET Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023 BOSTON, Sept. 7, 2023 — Over half of patients ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of data from a long-running study of more than 11,000 adults from four diverse communities in the United States has found that adults who had high blood pressure while both seated upright and lying supine (flat on their backs) had a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, heart failure or premature death compared to adults without high blood pressure while upright and supine.  Adults who had high blood pressure while lying supine but not while seated upright had similar elevated risks of heart attack, stroke, ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of electronic health records for more than 60,000 adults in the United States found that systolic, or top-number, blood pressure rose slightly during the winter compared to summer months. The health records were of adults being treated for high blood pressure from 2018 to 2023 at six health care centers of varying sizes located in the southeast and midwestern United States. The researchers found that, on average, participants’ systolic blood pressure increased by up to 1.7 mm Hg in the winter months compared to the summer months. They also found that population ...

Research Highlights: Community health centers participating in the National Hypertension Control Initiative (NHCI) that introduced self-measured blood pressure interventions to their patients — including individuals from Black, Hispanic and American Indian/Alaskan Native populations, who are disproportionately impacted by hypertension and by the COVID-19 pandemic — experienced improvements in blood pressure control rates since 2021, when NHCI began. Community Health Centers in the NHCI that received funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Health Resources and Services Administration and Office of Minority Health and ...

Heart problems after a COVID infection are a serious concern for both elite athletes and recreational athletes alike.  A study from Amsterdam UMC, published today in Heart, offers some reassuring news. "We examined over 250 elite athletes and found that those who had contracted COVID-19 did not experience severe heart issues that impacted their careers," says Juliette van Hattum, a PhD candidate in sports cardiology at Amsterdam UMC.  The study specifically focused on elite athletes, a group that could be particularly susceptible to heart issues, particularly heart ...

Antarctica’s vast ice masses seem far away, yet they store enough water to raise global sea levels by several meters. A team of experts from European research institutes has now provided the first systematic stability inspection of the ice sheet’s current state. Their diagnosis: While they found no indication of irreversible, self-reinforcing retreat of the ice sheet in West Antarctica yet, global warming to date could already be enough to trigger the slow but certain loss of ice over the next hundreds to thousands ...

Early findings of two studies from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center shed light on new ways to anticipate recurrence in HPV-positive head and neck cancer sooner. The papers, published in Cancer and Oral Oncology, offer clinical and technological perspectives on how to measure if recurrence is happening earlier than current blood tests allow, and provide a framework for a new, more sensitive blood test that could help in this monitoring. “When metastatic head and neck cancer returns, it impacts their quality of life and can be disfiguring, interfering with the ability to talk, ...

For the past decade, companies across North America have paid more attention to supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). This has prompted many organizations to create a leadership role fully dedicated to advancing EDI — so much so that between 2015 and 2020, the job title “head of diversity” increased 107 percent on LinkedIn. By 2021, more than half of S&P 500 firms had named a chief diversity officer. But a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business shows many people have deeply held beliefs about who should ...

Contact infection is among the most common ways pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses, spread from one person to another. Hand washing and disinfection are important hygiene practices to minimize the probability of catching infectious diseases. Interestingly, our hands also have a natural barrier that fights off pathogens. While this had been known to science for quite some time, the exact mechanisms by which this barrier acts on pathogens remained a mystery until recently.   In a 2021 study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Kao Corporation, Japan, revealed that lactic acid (LA), which has a molecular ...

Cosimo Commisso, Ph.D., has received a grant from the Department of Defense for $1 million to advance the research of a small molecule that kills pancreatic cancer cells by disrupting their pH equilibrium. The project is funded as part of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Program (PCARP), which aims to improve our understanding of pancreatic cancer for the benefit of service members, veterans, their families and the general public. “We’ve seen that this small molecule—called IMD-0354—works on cancer cells in the lab,” says Commisso, associate professor and director of the Cancer Metabolism and Microenvironment Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “This ...

Toronto, ON —Older adults who have had cancer had a high risk of experiencing symptoms of depression during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic according to a new study published in Cancer Management and Research. The study was focused on a sample of 2486 adults aged 50 and older with a history of cancer who participated in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Among the 1765 individuals from the study who had a history of cancer but no lifetime history of depression, researchers found that 1 in 8 experienced depression for the first time during the early stages of the pandemic. “The ...

With the help of a new grant from the National Institute of Health for more than $2.6 million, Assistant Professor Timothy Huang, Ph.D., will continue his research on the role of the brain’s immune cells on the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 47 million people worldwide, with 10 million new cases of dementia diagnosed each year. This number will continue to grow as the world population ages. Newly approved FDA treatments for Alzheimer’s remove beta-amyloid, a protein that accumulates into plaques, from the brain. However, ...

Cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) have become increasingly popular over the past few decades. This psychological treatment, used to treat problems ranging from marital issues, eating disorders, anxiety disorders and depression, has been adopted by clinicians around the world. However, the implementation of CBT still lags outside the Western countries where it was first developed. In a new review article, researchers examined the most popular CBT programs for young people in Japan, a country that ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Sept. 7, 2023) – Jessica Faulkner, PhD, a physiologist whose research is focused on sex differences in cardiovascular disease at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, is the recipient of the Harry Goldblatt Award for New Investigators from the American Heart Association’s 2023 Hypertension Council. She will be honored at the Hypertension Scientific Sessions in Boston this week. This prestigious award is named for the pathologist who established the first animal model of hypertension in 1934 and recognizes an early career independent investigator working in hypertension or cardiovascular research who has significantly contributed ...