We tend to separate the brain and the muscle—the brain does the thinking; the muscle does the doing. The brain takes in complex information about the world and makes decisions, and the muscle merely executes. This has also shaped how we think about a single cell; some molecules within cells are seen as ‘thinkers’ that take in information about the chemical environment and decide what the cell needs to do for survival; separately, other molecules are seen as the ‘muscle,’ building structures needed for survival.   But a new study shows how the molecules that build structures, i.e, the muscle, can themselves do both the thinking and the doing. The ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists created a new drug delivery system, called the Spatiotemporal On-Demand Patch (SOP), which can receive commands wirelessly from a smartphone or computer to schedule and trigger the release of drugs from individual microneedles. The patch’s thin, soft platform resembles a Band-Aid and was designed to enhance user comfort and convenience, since wearability is a crucial factor for chronically ill patients. The research team, led by Juan Song, PhD, professor of pharmacology ...

AUSTIN, Texas –– Artificial intelligence has become the Swiss Army knife of the business world, a universal tool for increasing sales, optimizing efficiency, and interacting with customers. But new research from Texas McCombs explores another purpose for AI in business: to contribute to the social good. It can do so by helping businesses better serve vulnerable consumers: anyone in the marketplace who experiences limited access to and control of resources. “AI is widely recognized for its operational and ...

Structural insights into a potent antimalarial drug candidate’s interaction with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum have paved the way for drug-resistant malaria therapies, according to a new study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Van Andel Institute. The antimalarial molecule, TDI-8304, is one of a new class of experimental therapeutics that targets the proteasome, an essential, multiprotein complex in P. falciparum cells. Two years ago, the researchers showed in a preclinical study that TDI-8304 potently kills malaria parasites at multiple stages of their life cycle and ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Jan.  18, 2024) – New research from Virginia Commonwealth University fundamentally challenges the paradigm that business organizations should promote profit above all else. Christopher S. Reina, Ph.D., executive director of the VCU Institute for Transformative Leadership, lays out the foundation for transforming business to be much more people-centered and humanistic in “Humanistic Organizing: The Transformative Force of Mindful Organizational Communication.” ...

The quantum ground state of an acoustic wave of a certain frequency can be reached by completely cooling the system. In this way, the number of quantum particles, the so-called acoustic phonons, which cause disturbance to quantum measurements, can be reduced to almost zero and the gap between classical and quantum mechanics bridged. Over the past decade, major technological advances have been made, making it possible to put a wide variety of systems into this state. Mechanical vibrations oscillating between ...

DALLAS, January 17, 2024 — The American Heart Association and National Football League are asking classrooms, afterschool programs and other student groups to join the NFL PLAY 60 Fitness Tracking Competition from Jan. 22 to Feb. 9. The classroom with the most activity minutes in each of the 32 NFL club markets will receive a $1,000 grant with an additional $1,000 PLAY 60 grant awarded to the top classroom overall. The competition and the goal of NFL PLAY 60 is to increase physical activity in kids which impacts overall mental and physical wellness which is essential to help children reach their full potential. The NFL PLAY 60 Fitness Tracking Competition takes place ...

Electrical deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a well-established method for treating disordered movement in Parkinson’s disease. However, implanting electrodes in a person’s brain is an invasive and imprecise way to stimulate nerve cells. Researchers report in ACS’ Nano Letters a new application for the technique, called magnetogenetics, that uses very small magnets to wirelessly trigger specific, gene-edited nerve cells in the brain. The treatment effectively relieved motor symptoms in mice without damaging surrounding ...

Evolutionary biologists have long suspected that the diversification of a single species into multiple descendent species – that is, an “adaptive radiation” – is the result of each species adapting to a different environment. Yet formal tests of this hypothesis have been elusive owing to the difficulty of firmly establishing the relationship between species traits and evolutionary “fitness” for a group of related species that recently diverged from a common ancestral species. A global team of biologists led by McGill University have compiled nearly two decades of field data – representing the study ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn., January 18, 2024) St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital today announced a nearly $13 million investment toward a new research collaboration with scientists at Columbia University, Duke University and Stanford University to expand the understanding of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR), which are vital proteins that impact human health and disease. The collaborative research project is led by two St. Jude researchers, Scott Blanchard, Ph.D., and M. Madan Babu, Ph.D., who are working with Nobel laureate and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Robert Lefkowitz, M.D., of Duke University; Jonathan Javitch, M.D., Ph.D., of ...

WPI Researchers have developed a material to remove urea from water and potentially convert it into hydrogen gas. By building these materials of nickel and cobalt atoms with carefully tailored electronic structures, the group has unlocked the potential to enable these transition metal oxides and hydroxides to selectively oxidize urea in an electrochemical reaction. The study, led by Xiaowei Teng, the James H. Manning professor of Chemical Engineering at WPI, was recently published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters and highlighted in the publication’s supplementary front cover.  The ...

Consider the faba bean, also known as the fava bean or broad bean.  The bright-green legume has been enjoyed as a diet staple for thousands of years in Africa, Asia, and the Mediterranean. Just one cup of faba beans has 13 grams of protein — making it a better protein source than most other legumes — along with plenty of fiber, potassium, and iron. Plus, it’s a good cover crop that helps improve soil health, slow erosion, and control pests, disease, and weeds.  But you don’t often see it in the fields or on the menus in Virginia. That’s why College of Agriculture and Life ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA – Many electric vehicles are powered by batteries that contain cobalt — a metal that carries high financial, environmental, and social costs. MIT researchers have now designed a battery material that could offer a more sustainable way to power electric cars. The new lithium-ion battery includes a cathode based on organic materials, instead of cobalt or nickel (another metal often used in lithium-ion batteries). In a new study, the researchers showed that this material, which could be produced at much lower cost than cobalt-containing batteries, can conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. The new battery also has comparable storage ...

Epidermal microorganisms, vital in nutrient exchange between hosts and environments, have now been shown to play a key role in host toxicity through community changes. This research highlights how changes in the community of skin-based microbes correlate more significantly with earthworm toxicity than those in intestinal microorganisms, especially under combined soil contaminations. A new study (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eehl.2023.11.001) published in the journal Eco-Environment & Health, researchers from Zhejiang University revealed the crucial role of epidermal microorganisms in influencing earthworm toxicity under environmental stress, notably in conditions ...

The collaboration between scientists, farmers and managers is crucial to improve the protection of the little bustard, an endangered steppe-land bird in Spain due to human activity. The reduction of natural habitats, the increase in irrigation and the urbanization of the land have led to having less surface areas that guarantee the survival of this vulnerable species. An article published in the journal Biological Conservation reveals how cooperation between different actors is key to finding answers and avoiding the decline of the most threatened populations of the little bustard. The study, a pioneer example of adaptative conservation, ...

In today's increasingly interconnected world, high-quality communication has become more vital than ever. Accurately estimating the dynamic status of communication channels is a key factor in achieving this. Recently, a joint research team designed a new algorithm that offers high-level estimation accuracy and privacy protection with low computational and communication costs. This research was published Jan. 5 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. This new algorithm uses a specially designed deep learning model for precise estimation and a federated learning framework ...

Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness around the globe, affecting up to 44 million people. Although people of African ancestry are most frequently and severely affected by this hereditary disease, its genetic underpinnings in this population have rarely been studied. Now, a team of investigators has published findings revealing previously unknown inherited genetic variants that contribute to primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), the most common form of the disease. The study was based on the analysis of 11,275 individuals of African descent and is being published January 18, 2024, in Cell. “Individuals with African ancestry are five times more likely to be affected ...

Damage caused by sea level rises could cost the EU and UK economies up to 872 billion Euros in total by the end of the century, according to a modelling study published in Scientific Reports. Ignasi Cortés Arbués, Theodoros Chatzivasileiadis, Tatiana Filatova and colleagues modelled the potential economic impacts of sea level rises for 271 European regions by 2100 under a high emissions scenario (SSP5-RCP8.5) with no new coastal protection measures implemented after 2015. They combined ...

Members of a hunter-gatherer group that lived in south-western Scandinavia during the Mesolithic era — approximately 10,000 years ago — may have been affected by tooth decay and gum disease, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Emrah Kırdök, Anders Götherström and colleagues sequenced the DNA found on three pieces of birch tar — a substance made from heated birch bark — that were excavated in the 1990s from Huseby Klev, Sweden and have been dated to between 9,890 ...

PHILADELPHIA— A new analysis focusing specifically on people of African ancestry identified three gene variants that may be contributing to this population’s susceptibility to developing and being blinded by glaucoma. People of African ancestry are five times as likely as others to develop glaucoma and up to 15 times as likely to be blinded by the condition, but the vast majority of research has used data from people of European ancestry. Led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University ...

By 2060, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, nearly one in four Americans will be in an age bracket at elevated risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease unless interventions can help preserve cognitive function before deficits begin. The COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) is a large-scale, nationwide, randomized trial rigorously testing cocoa extract and multivitamin supplements directed by researchers at Mass General Brigham. Two previously published studies of cognition in COSMOS suggested a positive effect for a daily multivitamin. ...

Nurse home visits to disadvantaged mothers can significantly reduce their rates of hypertension and their daughters’ likelihood of obesity, finds a new reanalysis of health data by a team led by a UCL researcher. The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, reanalysed data taken as part of a Nurse-Family Partnership trial started more than 30 years ago – The Memphis New Mothers Study (1990-1994). The researchers found that prenatal and infancy nurse home visits decreased the likelihood of daughters being obese by 55% and being severely obese by 81% in adolescence. Similarly, mothers of girls showed a decrease ...

About The Study: The findings of this study that included 31 participants ages 65 to 79 suggest that older drivers, even if they regularly use cannabis, show evidence of impaired driving performance after smoking cannabis. Weaving was increased and speed was decreased at 30 minutes after smoking, which was not correlated with blood tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentrations; subjective experience and self-reports of impaired driving persisted for three hours. Authors: Patricia Di Ciano, Ph.D., of the Centre for Addiction ...

About The Study: This nonrandomized controlled trial of 108 patients with advanced Parkinson disease found that at 5-year follow-up quality of life remained stable in the deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) group and worsened in the standard-of-care medication group, mainly driven by the favorable effect of STN-DBS on mobility. These findings may provide helpful information when counseling patients on the efficacy of STN-DBS for Parkinson disease and monitoring patients postoperatively in long-term follow-up. Authors: Stefanie T. Jost, Ph.D., and Haidar S. Dafsari, M.D., of the University of Cologne, Germany, are the corresponding ...

Philadelphia, PA (January 18, 2024) – Understanding why we overeat unhealthy foods has been a long-standing mystery. While we know food's strong power influences our choices, the precise circuitry in our brains behind this is unclear. The vagus nerve sends internal sensory information from the gut to the brain about the nutritional value of food. But, the molecular basis of the reward in the brain associated with what we eat has been incompletely understood.  Now, a new study published in Cell Metabolism by a team from the ...