Research Highlights: An analysis of at-home blood-pressure monitors estimates that the arm cuffs for 10 of the most popular potentially do not fit up to 18 million adults in the U.S. and nearly 12% of Black adults. To ensure accurate blood pressure monitoring, the researchers suggest that manufacturers and retailers be aware of the disparities and improve access and selection of diverse blood pressure cuff sizes for consumers. Note: The studies featured in this news release are research abstracts. Abstracts ...

There are some pretty strange ingredients in cosmetics and skin care products. One example is snail mucin — also known as snail slime — which is used for its moisturizing and antioxidant properties. But researchers reporting in ACS Omega might have found something even weirder to put on your face: molecules made by fish gut bacteria. In cultured cells, the compounds had skin-brightening and anti-wrinkle properties, making them potential ingredients for your future skin care routine. Though fish guts might seem like the absolute last place to look for cosmetic compounds, it’s not a completely far-fetched idea. Many important drugs have ...

How does your dip in a local watering hole affect the stream’s chemistry? Researchers who previously analyzed the impact of people swimming and tubing on a Colorado creek report updated observations in ACS ES&T Water. They find that these recreational activities over a busy Labor Day weekend have a short-term effect, increasing the levels of metals, human gut-associated microbes and substances from personal care products. Researchers James Ranville, Carsten Prasse, John Spear, Noor Hamden, Carmen Villarruel and colleagues studied how recreational ...

Hong Kong (5 September 2024) – The Asian Fund for Cancer Research Limited (AFCR) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 BRACE Award Venture Competition: the First Prize goes to Concarlo Therapeutics, led by Founder and CEO Stacy Blain, Ph.D., and the Second Prize goes to Orphagen Pharmaceuticals, led by its Founder and CEO Scott Thacher, Ph.D. AFCR’s BRACE (Bridging Research from Academia to Cancer Entrepreneurship) Award Venture Competition is designed to support and accelerate oncology innovations on their path toward commercialization, aiming to improve outcomes for patients affected by cancer globally. ...

Research Highlights: In an analysis of 18 randomized clinical trials, people with obesity and high blood pressure who underwent bariatric (weight-loss) surgery were almost three times more likely to achieve blood pressure remission, defined as reducing to less than 140/90 mm Hg and no longer taking antihypertensive medication, and keep it under control in comparison to peers treated with medication and healthy lifestyle adjustments. Over a 1-to-5-year follow-up period, people with obesity who ...

PULLMAN, Wash. —  A new application that uses artificial intelligence may revolutionize the way scientists study hair and could lead to the development of health diagnostics based solely on hair. The AI model speeds up and streamlines the hair quantification process, allowing a microscope to scan slides and collect images of hundreds of hairs at a time. In a matter of seconds, it can capture an abundance of high-resolution data that is then processed with a deep learning algorithm that collects the color, shape, width and length of each individual hair. Researchers tested it using mouse fur, but it could be ...

A combined 4.8 million euros in ERC Starting Grants will go to scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). Awarded to early career researchers by the European Research Council (ERC), Starting Grants help researchers launch and develop projects, build capable teams, and pursue cutting-edge research. All three of ISTA’s ERC winners wholly embody the Institute’s curiosity-driven mission: they aim to find out how cells keep time, improve the way we date our stars, and optimize the extraction of relevant information from our ever-growing data. ERC Starting Grants ...

Drs Johanna Vos has won a highly prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants to pursue research aimed at better understanding weather patterns in extrasolar worlds deep in the galaxy. Dr Vos’ project: Exometeorology: Probing Extrasolar Atmospheres (Exo-PEA) Over the past 30 years, astronomers have uncovered thousands of new extrasolar planets, which vary from small, rocky worlds, to giant planets like Jupiter. Additionally, lots of isolated or free-floating worlds have been discovered. We have already learned that the atmospheres of these strange worlds are highly complex, hosting a range of weather processes.  The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope ...

Iliana Ivanova, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. The new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges. In this call, I am happy to see one of the highest shares of female grantees to date, a trend that I hope will continue. Congratulations to all!”  President of the European Research Council, Prof. ...

Dr Michael-John Dolan has won a highly prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants to pursue research aimed at uncovering the secrets of brain disorders and repair. Dr Dolan’s project: MICRODISSECT: Dissection of Microglial State Biology in Brain Repair Dr Dolan’s research will focus on microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, which can form distinct subtypes, or “states” – especially during brain damage, disease, or repair. While microglia are crucial for regulating neuroinflammation and brain repair, these states are poorly understood ...

If you upset one bee, what determines whether the entire hive decides to avenge her grievance? A $1.2 million grant will support UC Riverside scientists in answering questions like these about how honeybees communicate. Every third bite of food you eat has been pollinated by a bee. They are central to worldwide food production, but there have been an alarming number of die-offs recorded since 2006.  One solution to this issue is the use of special survivor bees that are more resistant to pests and diseases that are killing managed honeybees.  Commonly found in ...

“We are extremely happy about the freshly granted ERC project for Hannah Schneider. Thereby, the European Research Agency distinguished a highly talented young researcher, who develops new ideas and approaches to explore anatomical roots traits that are highly relevant for stress tolerance and resource efficiency of crops”, says Prof. Dr. Nicolaus von Wirén, Managing Director at IPK. “The new ERC project of the scientist from Minnesota, whom we allured to IPK just last October, follows the two previous ERC-Starting Grant holders Martin Mascher and Stefan Heckmann and will bring great international visibility to root research at IPK.”  “The ...

A study published in Nature Communications provides new insight into how damaged cells interact within disease-promoting microenvironments following acute kidney injury, or AKI. With limited treatment options, AKI frequently progresses to chronic kidney disease (CKD), which affects more than 1 in 7 U.S. adults—an estimated 37 million people. The new findings may contribute to future efforts to prevent CKD, which can lead to kidney failure.  The study brought together scientists from Andy McMahon’s lab at USC and Long Cai’s lab at Caltech, with support from a USC Broad Innovation Award that funded the cross-institutional research collaboration.  In ...

Honesty is the best policy… most of the time. Social norms help humans understand when we need to tell the truth and when we shouldn’t, to spare someone’s feelings or avoid harm. But how do these norms apply to robots, which are increasingly working with humans? To understand whether humans can accept robots telling lies, scientists asked almost 500 participants to rate and justify different types of robot deception.  “I wanted to explore an understudied facet of robot ethics, to contribute to our understanding of mistrust ...

Researchers at Tohoku University have successfully increased the capacity, lifetime durability, and cost-effectiveness of a capacitor in their pursuit of a more power-efficient future. A capacitor is a device used as part of a circuit that can store and release energy, just like a battery. What makes a capacitor different from a battery is that it takes much less time to charge. For example, your cellphone battery will power your phone instantly, but charging that battery back up to 100% when it dies is far from instantaneous. While this makes capacitors sound like the superior choice, they have some big drawbacks that need to be overcome. Firstly, their capacity is much smaller ...

New research has discovered a unique and promising avenue for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) earlier – by analysing AD biomarkers in blood – so that the impacts of dementia can be reduced. AD is the most common form of dementia, estimated to contribute to 60-70 per cent of cases, or more than 33 million cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation. Currently incurable, AD is usually diagnosed when a person is having significant difficulties with memory and thinking that impact their daily life. University of Melbourne researcher Dr Brandon Mahan leads a group of analytical geochemists from the Faculty ...

WEHI’s Bioinformatics division head, Professor Gordon Smyth, has won the 2024 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Research Software. The award recognises Prof Smyth’s lead role in developing and designing the limma software package, which helps researchers detect changes in gene activity.   limma has helped researchers around the world detect changes in gene activity – a crucial element to finding new treatments for a range of diseases, like cancer – and has been used or cited in more than 70,000 published papers worldwide.  The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are ...

Termites have a bad reputation. Most think of them as pests, a status that isn’t helped by their recent reclassification into the cockroach family. But not only do the termites that cause serious problems for humans only make up 3.5% of all termite species, termites also serve as crucial ecosystem engineers, maintaining the infrastructure of various environments. Like earthworms, they circulate nutrients by decomposing plant materials, and they play the important role of bioturbators: much like plowing a field, termites aerate the soil, expose underground nutrients, and let water infiltrate deeper layers of soil – ...

Drought stress has long been a limiting factor for crop production around the world, a challenge exacerbated by climate change. For more than a century­, scientists have targeted a key plant trait known as water use efficiency (WUE) to help crops grow with less water and avoid suffering from drought stress. Greater WUE can help plants avoid drought stress — but for most crops it’s also associated with lower productivity when water is plentiful. In a pair of new studies published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, ...

Learning new languages, sending emails, attending a virtual class, or speaking to loved ones halfway around the world are just some of the tasks accomplished by touching a button on a smartphone. Unfortunately, the ease and convenience of modern devices have also come with a painful crick in the neck. The sedentary nature of work and prolonged use of hand-held devices and computers have contributed to a sharp increase in neck pain. While fatigue in neck muscles has long been suspected of causing pain, the actual mechanical changes in the spine and muscles that precede weakness remain an outstanding question. Now, using high-precision X-ray ...

Long term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution is linked to a higher risk of infertility in men, whereas road traffic noise is linked to a higher risk of infertility in women over 35, finds a Danish study published by The BMJ today. If these findings are confirmed in future studies, they could help guide strategies to regulate noise and air pollution to protect the general population from these exposures, say the researchers. Infertility is a major global health problem affecting one in seven couples trying to conceive.  Several ...

Rates of prostate cancer across Europe since 1980 are “indicative of overdiagnosis”, say researchers in a study published by The BMJ today. Overdiagnosis refers to the detection of harmless cancers that are unlikely to cause symptoms or death during a patient’s lifetime, which can lead to unnecessary treatment, negative impacts on quality of life, and wasted healthcare resources. The findings show rapid increases in the number of new cases (incidence) in parallel with uptake of so far predominantly opportunistic ...

Four in ten children in Central London who travelled to school by car switched to more active modes of transport, such as walking, cycling, or public transport, following the introduction of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), according to new research. In the comparison area with no ULEZ, Luton, only two in ten children made this switch over the same period. Car travel contributes to air pollution, a major cause of heart and lung diseases including asthma attacks. Beyond this, it limits children's opportunities for physical activity, hindering their development and mental health, and increasing their risk of obesity and chronic illnesses. Despite ...

A major new scientific review of evidence published in the journal Addiction has identified three top strategies for quitting smoking: Varenicline -- a prescription drug sold under the brand names Chantix and Champix among others. Cytisine -- a plant-based compound available under prescription in the United Kingdom, in Canada as an over-the-counter natural health product (Cravv®) and throughout central and eastern Europe. Nicotine e-cigarettes. These work best when combined with behavioural support, ...

A major new review of evidence by a team of scientists, including a University of Massachusetts Amherst public health researcher, has identified the three best strategies for quitting smoking:  Varenicline – a prescription drug sold under the brand names Chantix and Champix, among others. Cytisine – a plant-based compound not widely available in the U.S. but sold as an over-the-counter natural health product (Cravv®) in Canada and throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and available under prescription in the United Kingdom. Nicotine e-cigarettes. The review, published ...