Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is emerging as a blood-based biomarker for many solid tumor types, including melanoma. A new study that assessed ctDNA in the blood of patients with BRAF wild-type (BRAF WT) stage III and IV melanoma concludes that measuring ctDNA may lead to alternative treatment options and better outcomes for these patients, report investigators in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier. For patients with BRAF WT stage III and IV melanoma, there is an urgent clinical need to identify prognostic biomarkers and biomarkers to predict treatment ...

Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) were recognized for their achievements at the 2023 meeting of ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. Teams reported new findings about radiation-induced secondary cancers, a new guidance system for radiation therapy, and the consequences of insurance denials, among other topics. At the meeting, held from October 1 to October 4, 2023, in San Diego, Simon Powell, MD, PhD, FRCP, Chair of MSK’s Department of Radiation Oncology and Enid A. Haupt Chair in Radiation Oncology, was honored with ASTRO’s Gold Medal Award. This award is ASTRO’s highest honor, bestowed upon ...

Type of work: peer-reviewed/clinical trial/people A major clinical trial shows that the drug, esketamine, one of the two main forms of ketamine, outperforms one of the standard treatments for treatment-resistant major depression. This industry-funded work is presented for the first time at the 36th ECNP Congress in Barcelona, with publication in the peer-reviewed journal the New England Journal of Medicine (see Notes for details). Clinical depression (also known as MDD, major depressive disorder) affects a significant number of people at any one time, giving ...

Understanding Treatment-Resistant Depression Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a particularly challenging form of major depressive disorder. As Albino Oliveira-Maia, head of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Neuropsychiatry Unit and the study’s national coordinator for Portugal, explains, “TRD is defined as the persistence of depressive symptoms despite adequate courses of at least two different antidepressant medications”. Despite repeated therapeutic attempts, these patients’ depressive symptoms ...

When two lattices with distinct angles or periodicities come together, they conjure a moiré superlattice — a realm where astonishing phenomena like superconductivity and optical solitons spring to life. At the heart of this realm lies the moiré flatband, a key player in shaping advanced light–matter interactions, such as laser emission and second harmonic generation. In moiré physics and its relevant applications, wielding control over flatbands is a pivotal superpower. Moiré flatbands are typically generated with special structures, often manipulated ...

Audio Roughly 40% of older Black adults live with a disability, compared to only one-third of older adults overall.   Disability is one of various disparities highlighted in a new study from the University of Michigan, which used data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging to examine the extent to which 50- to 80-year-olds were prepared to age in place and the racial and ethnic disparities that exist to that end. Sheria Robinson-Lane, U-M assistant professor of nursing and principal investigator, said many of the disparities were related to "weathering"—stressors connected to environmental, ...

Most Americans take it for granted that the water that comes out of their taps is clean and safe to drink.  But a new study published by a University of New Mexico scientist with colleagues from across the U.S. warns that water from many wells and community water systems contains unsafe levels of toxic contaminants, exposing millions to health risks, including cancer. The review in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology also finds that people living on tribal lands or ...

“In this work, we focused on the application of the established pipeline to the identification of the potential targets related to aging [...]” A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 18, entitled, “Biomedical generative pre-trained based transformer language model for age-related disease target discovery.” Target discovery is crucial for the development of innovative therapeutics and diagnostics. However, current approaches often face ...

Despite decades of decline, a genetic analysis of ruffed grouse reveals that Pennsylvania’s state bird harbors more genetic diversity and connectivity than expected. The findings suggest that the iconic game bird could be maintained in persistent numbers if appropriate protections are implemented. The study, led by Penn State and Pennsylvania Game Commission researchers, published in the journal Molecular Ecology. According to the researchers, Pennsylvania’s ruffed grouse populations have declined by up to 70% since the early ...

The Ohio State University (OSU) has been awarded a $20 million Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) grant from the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products and National Institutes of Health. The OSU-TCORS grant is a collaboration of experts from the colleges of medicine, public health and law organized and implemented through the Center for Tobacco Research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – Having either high or low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, or “good” cholesterol, is tied to a small increased risk of dementia in older adults, according to a study published in the October 4, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This study does not prove that high or low levels of HDL cholesterol cause dementia; it only shows an association. “Previous studies on this topic have been ...

New research fueled in part by citizen scientists reveals that the meadow spittlebug—known for the foamy, spit-like urine released by its nymphs—can feed on at least 1,300 species of host plants, more than twice the number of any other insect. The study, which is published today in the journal PLOS ONE, could be especially important in the effort to stop the bug from spreading a type of bacterium that has caused the death of crops across the world, including olive trees in Italy, grapevines in California, citrus trees in South America, and almond trees in Spain. “Thirteen hundred host plants means 1,300 opportunities ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and IEEE Computer Society have named Keshav Pingali, the W.A.”Tex” Moncrief Chair of Grid and Distributed Computing at the University of Texas at Austin, as the recipient of the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. The Ken Kennedy Award recognizes groundbreaking achievements in parallel and high performance computing. Pingali is cited for contributions to high-performance parallel computing for irregular algorithms such as graph algorithms. He is also cited for leadership on the Galois Project, which provides a unifying framework for parallelizing both irregular and regular algorithms. Pingali has made deep and wide-ranging ...

A survey of New York state residents found that nearly half of respondents increased the amount of time they spent on wild and backyard food in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, confirming anecdotes about increases in activities such as sourdough baking, fishing and gardening. People also tended to eat the food they produced, researchers found, possibly buffering the generally less healthful eating that was common at the time. “This was the period of 2020 when you couldn't find tomato cages, seeds were out of stock, and there were reports about record numbers of people hunting and ...

Winter is coming—eventually. And while the earth is warming, a new study suggests that the atmosphere is being pushed around in ways that cause long bouts of extreme winter cold or wet in some regions. The study’s authors say they have identified giant meanders in the global jet stream that bring polar air southward, locking in frigid or wet conditions concurrently over much of North America and Europe, often for weeks at a time. Such weather waves, they say, have doubled in frequency since the 1960s. In just the last few years, they have killed hundreds of people and ...

A Weill Cornell Medicine researcher has received a $610,000 grant from the Department of Defense to investigate the mechanisms causing DNA instability that potentially drives metastasis in bladder cancer. The research also aims to identify methods to intercept this spread. The Peer-Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) Idea Award funds innovative, high-risk, high-reward basic cancer research. One of the goals of the PRCRP program is to decrease the burden of cancer on service members and their families, veterans, and the American public.  “Approximately 40% of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer develop metastases, where ...

Contacts: David Hosansky, UCAR/NCAR Manager of Media Relations hosansky@ucar.edu 720-470-2073 Audrey Merket, UCAR/NCAR Science Writer and Public Information Officer amerket@ucar.edu 303-497-8293  Simultaneous outbreaks of large wildfires will become more frequent in the Western United States this century as the climate warms, putting major strains on efforts to fight fires, new research shows. The new study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), focused on wildfires of 1,000 acres or larger. It found that wildfire seasons in which ...

Whether you’re battling foes in a virtual arena or collaborating with colleagues across the globe, lag-induced disruptions can be a major hindrance to seamless communication and immersive experiences. That’s why researchers with the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) and the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed new technology to make data transfer over optical fiber communication faster and more efficient. Their new development, a novel class of optical modulators, is detailed in a new study published recently in the journal Nature Communications. Modulators can be thought of as like a light switch that controls certain ...

Rice University alumnus Louis Brus (’65) has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the “discovery and development of quantum dots,” nanosized particles with unique properties “that now spread their light from television screens and LED lamps,” according to a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announcement today. Brus, who started his undergraduate education at Rice in 1961, shares the distinction with Moungi Bawendi and Alexei Ekimov. Their work has been crucial to the development of nanotechnology, which has helped drive major computing ...

“Given the potential challenges of directly inhibiting UGDH, therapeutic strategies may extend to targeting downstream pathways and upstream substrates.”  A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on September 28, 2023, entitled, “UDP-glucose dehydrogenase (UGDH) in clinical oncology and cancer biology.” UDP-glucose-6-dehydrogenase (UGDH) is a cytosolic, hexameric enzyme that converts UDP-glucose to UDP-glucuronic acid (UDP-GlcUA), a key reaction in hormone and xenobiotic metabolism and in the production of extracellular matrix precursors.  In this review, researchers Meghan J. Price, Annee D. Nguyen, Jovita K. Byemerwa, ...

Paleolithic human populations survived even in the coldest and driest upland parts of Spain, according to a study published October 4, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño of the University of Alcalá, Spain, Javier Aragoncillo-del Rió of the Molina-Alto Tajo UNESCO Global Geopark, Spain and colleagues. Research into ancient hunter-gatherer populations of the Iberian Peninsula has mainly focused on coastal regions, with relatively little investigation into the inland. A classic hypothesis has been that the cold and dry conditions of inland Iberia ...

Antimicrobials don't appear to help pet dogs with uncomplicated diarrhea - so should likely be prescribed less often by vets - according to new causal inference study ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291057 Article Title: Target trial emulation: Do antimicrobials or gastrointestinal nutraceuticals prescribed at first presentation for acute diarrhoea cause a better clinical outcome in dogs under primary veterinary care in the UK? Author Countries: UK Funding: CP is supported at the RVC ...

A new analysis estimates a variety of potential benefits for environmental sustainability—for instance, reduced freshwater consumption and greenhouse gas emissions—that could result from switching all pet dogs and cats in the US or around the world to nutritionally sound, vegan diets. Andrew Knight of Griffith University, Australia, presents these calculations in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 4, 2023. The livestock industry has environmental impacts, such as land and freshwater ...

First fully peer-reviewed, indexed study to look at link between strict vegetarianism and genetics More people would like to be vegetarian than actually are. ‘We think it’s because there is something hard-wired here that people may be missing’ Findings open the door to further studies that could have important implications regarding dietary recommendations and the production of meat substitutes CHICAGO --- From Impossible Burger to “Meatless Mondays,” going meat-free is certainly in vogue. But a person’s genetic makeup plays ...

What if a vaccine, given to patients just before or after arriving at the hospital, could protect them against lethal superbugs that lurk in healthcare settings? That’s the premise behind an experimental vaccine invented by a USC-led team and patented by the university. Researchers designed the formula to prevent serious infections from drug-resistant pathogens. A new study shows that a single dose, administered in mouse models, put immune cells into "Incredible Hulk" mode, providing rapid protection against eight different bacteria and fungi species. “It’s an early warning system. ...