Leonora Balaj, PhD, an investigator in the department of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, is co-senior author of a new paper in Nature Communications, Clinical Utility of a Blood Based Assay for the Detection of IDH1.R132H-Mutant Gliomas. Bob Carter, MD, chair of Neurosurgery at Mass General, is co-senior author of the study. Syeda Maheen Batool, MD, an instructor in investigation in Neurosurgery at Mass General, is lead author. Background: Glioma represents the most common central nervous system cancer in adults. The current ...

[Note: High-resolution images related to this research available for download at this link. Caption and credit information provided.]   WASHINGTON (August 30, 2024) — A team of international researchers has uncovered a surprising genetic mechanism that influences the vibrant and complex patterns on butterfly wings. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team, led by Luca Livraghi at the George Washington University and the University of Cambridge, discovered ...

Key takeaways Young griffon vultures move frequently between sleeping sites in different locations, interacting with many friends. They get set in their ways as they age and roost in the same spots with the same individuals; older vultures follow the same paths. Roosts act as information hubs; older vultures may have a more thorough knowledge of where to find food resources and less need to learn about them from other vultures. If you’d rather be watching TV on your couch than dancing at the club, you might have something in common with aging ...

A study by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital, reveals that the protein Tau – a key player implicated in several neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer’s disease – also plays a positive role in the brain. Tau mitigates neuronal damage caused by excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) or free radicals and promotes healthy aging. The study was published in Nature Neuroscience. “ROS ...

A doughnut-shaped region thousands of kilometres beneath our feet within Earth’s liquid core has been discovered by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), providing new clues about the dynamics of our planet’s magnetic field. The structure within Earth’s liquid core is found only at low latitudes and sits parallel to the equator. According to ANU seismologists, it has remained undetected until now. The Earth has two core layers: the inner core, a solid layer, and the outer core, a liquid layer. Surrounding the Earth’s core is the mantle. The ...

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have found a new method to increase both speed and success rates in drug discovery. The study, published Aug. 30 in the journal Science Advances, offers renewed promise when it comes to discovering new drugs. “The hope is we can speed up the timeline of drug discovery from years to months,” said Alex Thorman, PhD, co-first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental and Public ...

The imaging techniques currently used in biological research cannot penetrate into deeper tissue layers. In cancer treatment, this means that remnants of tumors or individual cancer cells at tumor margins and in lymph nodes are not visible. Doctors performing surgery are therefore repeatedly faced with the difficult question of whether all of the affected tissue has actually been removed. For the patient's quality of life, however, the complete removal of the tumor is just as essential as the preservation of healthy tissue ...

To the known risk factors for cardiovascular disease—high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, overweight and obesity, smoking, and physical inactivity—a new one has to be added: clonal hematopoiesis. This condition is triggered by acquired mutations in blood stem cells and was already known to be associated with an elevated cardiovascular risk. However, until now it was uncertain if clonal hematopoiesis was a cause or consequence of cardiovascular disease. Now, a new study published in Nature Medicine and carried out by researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) resolves this critical debate ...

Climate change is affecting ecosystems in many different ways. One of its consequences are increasingly longer and more intense periods of heat, which affect essential natural processes –  such as pollination. A team of researchers from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) has now investigated in more detail how heat affects one particular player in these processes: The bumblebee. "Bumblebees are important pollinators in natural and agricultural systems. They therefore ...

Attracting around 1,000 participants from industry and academia, the XXVIII EFMC International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC-ISMC) is supposed to take place in Rome, Italy from September 1-5, 2024. After the generative AI updates recently announced on the IMGAIA webinar, Insilico Medicine will be sharing more innovative details while exploring collaboration chances at Booth #50. EFMC-ISMC is a key symposium in the field of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, and the symposium this year features ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The invention of a tool capable of unlocking previously impossible organic chemical reactions has opened new pathways in the pharmaceutical industry to create effective drugs more quickly.   Traditionally, most drugs are assembled using molecular fragments called alkyl building blocks, organic compounds that have a wide variety of applications. However, because of how difficult it can be to combine different types of these compounds into something new, this method of creation ...

Link to Google Drive folder containing images with caption and credit information: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UM9rl47Xd_Bs-ov0HpVwC-rtUDonM3oJ?usp=sharing   Post-embargo link to release: https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/08/30/mosquito-swarm/     Embargoed by Current Biology For public release at 11 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time (8 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time) on Friday, Aug. 30, 2024   A high-pitched buzzing sound in your ear is an unmistakable sign that a female mosquito is out on the hunt — for they, not males, drink blood. Hearing ...

Many people who receive a problematic medical bill don’t challenge it – but new USC Schaeffer Center research shows they are likely missing out on a chance for financial relief. About 1 in 5 people said they recently received a medical bill they disagreed with or couldn’t afford, including 61.5% who said they contacted a billing office to address their concern, according to survey results published Aug. 30 in JAMA Health Forum. Most who reached out said they received some form of payment help or had their bill corrected. It’s ...

Enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans is not associated with altered frailty trajectories compared with enrollment in Traditional Medicare (TM), according to research published today in JAMA Network Open. In the article Frailty in Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries and Traditional Medicare Beneficiaries, lead author Sandra M. Shi, MD, MPH and colleagues suggest that more work is needed to better understand the health services needs of older adults with frailty. “A growing proportion of the population is enrolling in Medicare Advantage (MA), which typically ...

About The Study: This cohort study observed no significantly elevated long-term risk of autoimmune sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 variant infection, except for a modestly increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease and bullous skin disorders in the hospitalized subgroup during the predominance of the Omicron variant. Booster vaccination appeared to mitigate the risk of long-term autoimmune sequelae.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Liang ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that racial disparities in cancer stage at diagnosis and survival exist among adolescent and young adult patients when disaggregated according to federal guidelines, which has health policy and funding implications. These results support the need for tailored interventions and informed public policy to achieve cancer care equity for all races.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kekoa Taparra, MD, PhD, email ktaparra@stanford.edu. To ...

About The Study: This cohort study found that early childhood programming is associated with social determinants of health in adulthood. These findings reinforce the importance of early childhood education in addressing health disparities and contributing to healthier, more equitable communities and suggest that educational attainment is a key mechanism for health promotion. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Arthur J. Reynolds, PhD, email ajr@umn.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.32050) Editor’s ...

HER2 is a critical protein that plays a pivotal role in breast cancer cell growth and aggressiveness. Its expression level is a key indicator for treatment decisions, including the use of HER2-targeted therapies. Currently, HER2 status assessment relies heavily on immunohistochemical (IHC) staining of tissue slides followed by manual inspection by pathologists. This process, though widely adopted, suffers from several limitations, including poor reproducibility among pathologists and extended turnaround times. These challenges are further exacerbated in resource-constrained ...

BUFFALO, NY- August 30, 2024 – A new editorial was published in Volume 11 of Oncoscience on July 19, 2024, entitled, “Functional information offers individualized adaptive cancer therapies.” As introduced in this editorial, the Oxford Computer Science Dictionary offers both general and technical definitions of information. Generally, information is anything that can cause a change in a human mind's opinion about the current state of the real world. Technically, information is anything that reduces the uncertainty of a system's state. Claude Shannon provided an objective measure of information, known as entropy (H), by mathematically defining ...

In a research paper, scientists from the Beijing Institute of Technology proposed an event related potential (ERP) extraction method to solve the asynchronous problem of low-quality video target detection, designed the time-frequency features based on continuous wavelet transform, and established an EEG decoding model based on neural characterization. The average decoding accuracy of 84.56% is achieved in pseudo-online test. The new research paper, published July 4 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, introduces a low-quality ...

CHICAGO — Data science and data literacy are rapidly becoming essential skills for success across industry sectors and career fields. Now, Data Science 4 Everyone (DS4E) is inviting everyone — teachers, higher education faculty, parents, and students — to help shape what learning in this crucial area will look like. It’s an area essential to success in today’s world and tomorrow’s. Nurses use data science skills when they read a patient’s chart; engineers analyze data to design hardware and products; and business owners use data to guide ...

While some microbes can make people sick or spoil food, others are critical for survival. These tiny organisms can also be engineered to make specific molecules. Researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have rewired one such microbe to help tackle greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: It takes in carbon dioxide (CO2) gas and produces mevalonate, a useful building block for pharmaceuticals. The increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has led to widespread global warming. To begin to address the problem, greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, need to be significantly ...

Korean researchers announced that Korea’s Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) commercialization technology, which was the world’s first successfully commercialized CDMA technology in 1996, has been listed on the ‘Milestones Program,’ a world-renowned program hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). As a result, it has become Korea’s first technology to be recognized by a world-class association to contribute to the development of mankind and industrial innovation. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced on June 11 that their ...

About The Study: Among patients who underwent major noncardiac surgery, a continuation strategy of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors before surgery was not associated with a higher rate of postoperative complications than a discontinuation strategy. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Matthieu Legrand, MD, PhD (matthieu.legrand@ucsf.edu) and Etienne Gayat, MD, PhD (etienne.gayat@aphp.fr). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.17123) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

A new article in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy describes the consensus reached by invited experts who participated in a meeting to evaluate the potential carcinogenicity of gene therapies. Click here to read the article now. The participants discuss the definition of vector genotoxicity, sources of uncertainty, suitable toxicological endpoints for genotoxic assessment of gene therapies, and future research needs. The proposed recommendations will help guide the development of regulatory guidelines for the non-clinical toxicological assessment of gene therapy products.  J­an ...