The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory added a new neutron scattering instrument to its powerhouse of discovery at the Spallation Neutron Source, charting new territory for neutron imaging through artificial intelligence. In July, DOE’s Office of Science approved the final commissioning of the Versatile Neutron Imaging Instrument, or VENUS. “It’s a dream come true,” said ORNL neutron scattering scientist Hassina Bilheux. “It has been an honor and privilege to ...

A machine-learning tool created by Weill Cornell Medicine and Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) investigators can help distinguish subtypes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which may help scientists find ways to improve care for the complex condition. The study published Aug. 29 in Nature Communications shows that artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can effectively and efficiently subtype pathology samples from patients with RA. “Our tool automates the analysis of pathology slides, which may one day lead to more precise and efficient disease diagnosis and personalized treatment for ...

An ancient gene is crucial for the development of the distinctive waist that divides the spider body plan in two, according to a study publishing August 29th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Emily Setton from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, and colleagues. The spider body is divided into two sections, separated by a narrow waist. Compared to insects and crustaceans, relatively little is known about embryonic development in spiders, and the genes involved in the formation of the spider waist are poorly understood. To investigate, researchers sequenced genes expressed in embryos of the Texas brown tarantula (Aphonopelma hentzi) ...

A new study paves the way to understanding biotic recovery after an ecological crisis in the Mediterranean Sea about 5.5 million years ago. An international team led by Konstantina Agiadi from the University of Vienna has now been able to quantify how marine biota was impacted by the salinization of the Mediterranean: Only 11 percent of the endemic species survived the crisis, and the biodiversity did not recover for at least another 1.7 million years. The study was just published in the renowned journal Science. Lithospheric movements throughout Earth history have repeatedly led to the isolation of regional seas from the ...

Staphylococcus aureus has the potential to develop durable vancomycin resistance, according to a study published August 28, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Samuel Blechman and Erik Wright from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Despite decades of widespread treatment with the antibiotic vancomycin, vancomycin resistance among the bacterium S. aureus is extremely uncommon—only 16 such cases have reported in the U.S. to date. Vancomycin resistance mutations enable bacteria to grow in the presence of vancomycin, but they do so at a cost. Vancomycin-resistant S. aureus (VRSA) strains grow more slowly and will often lose their resistance mutations if vancomycin ...

A person’s exhaled breath – which provides information that could unveil diverse health insights – has been hard to analyze. Now, a novel “smart mask” provides real-time, non-invasive monitoring of what people exhale. The mask, dubbed EBCare, captures and analyzes exhaled breath condensate (EBC), and it offers a promising solution for continuous EBC analysis at an affordable cost. “The significance of EBCare lies in its role as a versatile, convenient, efficient, real-time research platform and solution in various medical domains, ...

Challenging long-held beliefs that bird nest building is solely influenced by genetics or the environment, researchers report that the white-browed sparrow weavers of the Kalahari Desert, Africa, build nests with distinct architectural styles that reflect group-specific cultural traditions. “Behavioral traditions in birds have been well documented for song, migration, foraging, and tool use. Here, we add building behavior and show that architectural styles emerge from birds that build together,” write the ...

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) from mitochondria are key drivers of genetic chaos in cancer by causing the collapse of micronuclear envelopes, a process that fuels the chromosomal instability (CIN) often observed in aggressive tumor behavior. These are the findings of two new studies. The findings identify key proteins in this destructive process – p62 and CHMP7 – revealing potential prognostic markers and therapeutic targets for high-CIN tumors. Errors in chromosome segregation during cell division can lead to chromosomal instability, a key feature of cancer. These errors result in the formation of micronuclei, which are small structures ...

A meta-analysis of Mediterranean Sea marine species reveals the profound impact of the Messinian Salinity Crisis – a drastic environmental event that resulted in the almost complete evaporation of the Mediterranean Sea roughly 5.5 million years ago. According to the new study’s findings, the event nearly reset the region’s biodiversity. The findings offer novel insights linking tectonic and palaeoceanographic changes to marine biodiversity, highlighting the significant role of salt giants in shaping biogeographic patterns, including those that still influence ecosystems today. The Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC), ...

New study from Hebrew University reveals that marmoset monkeys use specific calls, known as "phee-calls," to name each other, a behavior previously known to exist only in humans, dolphins, and elephants. This discovery highlights the complexity of social communication in marmosets and suggests that their ability to vocally label each other may provide valuable insights into the evolution of human language. LINK to pictures https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VjzO-70hk27UVX_IuQ6FTsHgmCgk9PCH?usp=drive_link Credit for pictures and sound: David Omer Lab In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers from Hebrew ...

Personalized wearable devices that monitor people's health are on the rise. From watches to patches and other types of sensors, these smart devices can monitor heart activity, inflammation levels, and more to help patients better manage their health from their own homes. Now, a new type of wearable device can be added to the list: a high-tech paper mask that monitors one's breath.    Caltech's Wei Gao, professor of medical engineering, and his colleagues have developed a ...

In a study published in Science, researchers at Karolinska Institutet describe the neural processes behind how morphine relieves pain. This is valuable knowledge because the drug has such serious side effects. Morphine is a powerful painkiller that belongs to the group of opioids. It blocks signals in the pain pathways and also increases feelings of pleasure. Morphine acts on several central and peripheral pain pathways in the body, but the neural processes behind the pain relief have not previously been fully understood. Researchers have now investigated how morphine relieves pain using ...

Chemists at the University of Amsterdam have developed a method to furnish a range of molecules with a trifluoromethyl group attached to a sulphur, nitrogen or oxygen atom. Their procedure, which has just been published in Science, avoids the use of PFAS reagents. It thus provides an environmentally friendly synthesis route for pharmaceutical and agrochemical compounds that rely on the presence of the trifluoromethyl group. The straightforward and effective method was developed at the Flow Chemistry group at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences ...

Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) School of Dentistry created a first of its kind sleep apnea model for studying chronic pain. A study published July 30 in Science Signaling, explains the mechanism behind persistent pain related to obstructive sleep apnea. More than 100 million people worldwide are affected by obstructive sleep apnea. This health condition causes a person to stop breathing numerous times while they are sleeping. Reduced sleep time and sleep quality can lead to numerous health problems including chronic pain, which is diagnosed at a much higher rate ...

August 29, 2024 — Marijuana use is common among patients considering plastic surgery and is associated with elevated nicotine levels on laboratory tests, reports a paper in the September issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "We found that patients who report marijuana use also have elevated urine nicotine and cotinine levels ...

August 29, 2024 — A machine learning algorithm performs well in predicting the risk of persistent opioid use after hand surgery, reports a study in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "We found that a machine learning model performs well in identifying hand surgery patients who are more likely to become persistent opioid users," comments ASPS ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A team led by research scientists from the Indiana University School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute has received funding expected to total $15.5 million from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to establish a national network structure to include more nursing home residents in clinical trials. Even though clinical trials are critical to the development and testing of medical therapies and treatments including drugs and care models, individuals living in nursing homes are rarely included in clinical research studies. The new five-year award will fund ...

Microbes are part of the food we eat and can influence our own microbiome, but we know very little about the microbes in our foods. Now, researchers have developed a database of the “food microbiome” by sequencing the metagenomes of 2,533 different foods. They identified 10,899 food-associated microbes, half of which were previously unknown species, and showed that food-associated microbes account for around 3% of the adult and 56% of the infant gut microbiome on average. The study published August 29 in the journal ...

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have made a groundbreaking discovery about how starfish manage to survive predatory attacks by shedding their own limbs. The team has identified a neurohormone responsible for triggering this remarkable feat of self-preservation.  Autotomy, the ability of an animal to detach a body part to evade predators, is a well-known survival strategy in the animal kingdom. While lizards shedding their tails are a familiar example, the mechanisms behind this process remain largely mysterious.  Now, scientists have unveiled a key piece of the puzzle. By studying the common European starfish, ...

About The Study: Postmenopausal women with historical hormone therapy (HT) use were biologically younger than those not receiving HT, with a more evident association observed in those with low socioeconomic status. The biological aging discrepancy mediated the association between HT and decreased mortality. Promoting HT in postmenopausal women could be important for healthy aging. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Chenglong Li, PhD, email chenglongli@bjmu.edu.cn. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.30839) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of women ages 18 or older diagnosed with stage I to III breast cancer between 2010 and 2018 suggest that residing in persistently impoverished neighborhoods is associated with poor tumor characteristics and increased mortality.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Samilia Obeng-Gyasi, MD, MPH, email samilia.obeng-gyasi@osumc.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.27755) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

About The Study: Inhaler prescriptions filled by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services beneficiaries in 2022 resulted in an estimated 1.15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, equivalent to 226,960 homes’ yearly electricity use. Metered-dose inhalers were responsible for nearly all inhaler-related emissions, with the largest contribution arising from short-acting β-agonist medications. Although dry-powder and soft-mist inhalers had substantially lower emissions, they accounted for a disproportionate amount of spending, representing nearly two-thirds ...

How are rodents able to navigate pitch-black subway tunnels or other dark environments so adeptly, despite not being able to rely on vision?   With the assistance of a novel motion simulator, researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel have discovered that rats rely on airflow to navigate their surroundings. When they move, the flow of air relative to their bodies provides crucial information, complementary to their sense of balance, to perceive their own motion in space. This might explain their agility in the dark as they scurry through pipes and tunnels, ...

PHILADELPHIA – A new tool for monitoring immune health patterns over time has revealed how a pair of checkpoint inhibitor therapies works together to recruit new cancer-fighting T cells with every infusion. Findings from the use of the new tool, developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center (ACC), were published today in Cancer Cell. The study challenges fundamental assumptions about how a common immunotherapy ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) determine how a protein called A20 can regulate the inflammatory response to suppress chronic hepatitis Tokyo, Japan – Many individuals worldwide suffer from chronic liver disease (CLD), which poses significant concerns for its tendency to lead to hepatocellular carcinoma or liver failure. CLD is characterized by inflammation and fibrosis. Certain liver cells, called hepatic stellate cells (HSCs), contribute to both these characteristics, but how they are specifically involved in the inflammatory response is not ...