Curated News: Grant Funded News

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Poor metabolic health or dysfunction, not obesity, leads to poor anti-influenza immune responses. Learn about the new St. Jude influenza vaccination research.

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Researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have developed a new urine-based test that addresses a major problem in prostate cancer: how to separate the slow-growing form of the disease unlikely to cause harm from more aggressive cancer that needs immediate treatment.

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Nearly everyone with Down syndrome will eventually develop Alzheimer's disease. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that Alzheimer’s disease starts earlier and moves faster in people with Down syndrome.

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In a new study, a Johns Hopkins Medicine-led research team reports that social stress during adolescence in female mice later results in prolonged elevation of the hormone cortisol after they give birth.

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In their ongoing quest to develop a range of methods for managing plasma so it can be used to generate electricity in a process known as fusion, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have shown how two old methods can be combined to provide greater flexibility.

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A new $3.4 million award to the Wayne State University School of Medicine from the National Institutes of Health aims to overcome the limitations of conventional semen analyses by examining mitochondrial DNA levels in sperm as a novel biomarker of sperm fitness.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that an FDA-approved epilepsy drug can prevent or slow the growth of NF1-linked optic gliomas in mice, laying the groundwork for a clinical trial.

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Biologist B. Duygu Özpolat at Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues published a single-cell atlas for a highly regenerative annelid worm. This research may help inform stem cell technologies and regenerative medicine down the line.

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NIBIB-supported researchers have developed a smart nanoprobe designed to infiltrate prostate tumors and send back a signal using an optical imaging technique known as Raman spectroscopy.

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An effort to reduce use of PPI heartburn drugs in veterans because of overuse, cost and potential risks succeeded, but provides lessons about deprescribing efforts and suggests the drugs' purported harms may be overblown.

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Meandering ocean currents play an important role in the melting of Antarctic ice shelves, threatening a significant rise in sea levels.

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Findings show a newly created drug can prevent runaway inflammation while still allowing the immune system to handle the virus, even when given late into infection.

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Solar and wind power plants are unpredictable sources of electricity. That makes integrating them to the power grid a challenge for grid operators. With the help of a U.S. Department of Energy grant, Iowa State engineers are working to create a modern grid that's smart and flexible enough to efficiently distribute renewables.

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A new analysis by researchers at UCLA Health found that mortality rates of middle-aged Black Americans caused by the “deaths of despair” -- suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease – surpassed the rate of white Americans in 2022.

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Racial discrimination experienced during midlife is associated with Alzheimer’s disease pathology, according to a new study from researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Georgia. The findings appear online today in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

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The bitter taste of certain drugs is a barrier to taking some medications as prescribed, especially for people who are particularly sensitive to bitter taste. A Monell team found that the diabetes drug rosiglitazone could partially block the bitter taste of some especially bad-tasting medications.

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A new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) – published in JAMA Network Open today – showed that, aside from retirements, poor working conditions are the leading reasons nurses leave healthcare employment.

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In a study published April 8 in Current Biology, University of Washington researchers found that when the adult talked and played socially with a 5-month-old baby, the baby’s brain activity particularly increased in regions responsible for attention — and the level of this type of activity predicted enhanced language development at later ages.

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E-visits have become a regular part of everyday health care for some of the 30 million older Americans who have traditional Medicare. About 1% of them have used asynchronous patient portal messaging in a way that prompted their doctor or other health care provider to bill Medicare for their time.

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Genetic analysis finds evidence suggesting that acoustic fat bodies in the heads of toothed whales were once the muscles and bone marrow of the jaw.

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By analyzing 42 years worth of canned salmon, University of Washington scientists show that levels a common marine parasite rose in two salmon species in the Gulf of Alaska from 1979 to 2021. The rise may be a sign of ecosystem recovery, possibly influenced by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

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Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that treating mice with an antibody that blocks the interaction between APOE proteins (white) sprinkled within Alzheimer’s disease plaques and the LILRB4 receptor on microglia cells (purple) activates them to clean up damaging plaques (blue) in the brain.

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Mental health issues during pregnancy or the first year of parenthood have a much greater chance of getting detected and treated now than just over a decade ago, a trio of new studies suggests. But the rise in diagnosis and care hasn’t happened equally across different groups and states.

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Valley fever is a fungal respiratory infection that’s stealthily spreading through the soil and dust throughout the American West. An interdisciplinary research team is trying to map where the disease-causing fungus can survive and where it’ll spread as the climate changes.

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A conveyer belt of ice jostles the entire Ross Ice Shelf out of place at least once daily, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

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The lipids in some herbal teas have been identified in detail for the first time, preparing the ground for investigating their contribution to the health benefits of the teas.

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While pacemakers have been instrumental in treating many patients with heart rhythm disorders, their bulky design and dependence on wires can limit their usefulness and poses a risk of heart damage or infection. Researchers have cut the cords, shrunk the size, and expanded the capabilities of current designs.

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PPPL researchers have determined the maximum density of uncharged particles at the edge of a plasma before certain instabilities become unpredictable. This is the first time such a level has been established for Lithium Tokamak Experiment-Beta. Knowing this level is a big step in their mission to prove lithium is the ideal choice for an inner-wall coating in a tokamak because it guides them toward the best practices for fueling their plasmas.

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A case study on the effects of open waste burning on air quality in Northwestern Greenland calls attention to the importance of no-one-left-behind sustainable air quality monitoring in the Arctic region.

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Findings from a National Eye Institute-supported study show for the first time that when babies look at photos of unfamiliar everyday scenes, such as an office or a lab, they tend to fixate on the same regions where adults find meaning. This inclination to home in on what’s interesting or meaningful grows more pronounced as babies age. The findings, published in Infancy, provide a more nuanced understanding of visual development, which may lead to earlier detection of brain-based causes of vision problems, such as cerebral/cortical visual impairment.

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National Eye Institute researchers studying human retinas discovered 87 target genes where a mix of environmental factors likely influence one’s risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in people ages 65 and older.

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Analysis found that models developed to detect depression using language in Facebook posts did not work when applied to Black people's accounts

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Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, have discovered that a protein called Piezo1 prevents a type of immune cell in the lung from becoming hyperactivated by allergens.

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More than half of all new doctors face some form of sexual harassment in their first year on the job, including nearly three-quarters of all new female doctors and a third of males, a new study finds.

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Human artificial chromosomes (HACs) capable of working within human cells could power advanced gene therapies, including those addressing some cancers, along with many laboratory applications, though serious technical obstacles have hindered their development.

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Using novel genetic and genomic tools, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have shed light on the role of immune cells called macrophages in lipid-rich tissues like the brain, advancing our understanding of Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

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Finding viable alternatives to traditional petroleum-based plastics and microplastics has never been more important. New research from scientists at UC San Diego and Algenesis shows that their plant-based polymers biodegrade — even at the microplastic level — in under seven months.

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Prostate cancer patients receiving care at hospitals that are part of a special drug-pricing program were more likely to stick to their prescription drug therapy than patients at other hospitals, according to a study from researchers at the University of Michigan’s Rogel Cancer Center and Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

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A multidisciplinary group of NIH-funded scientists have successfully captured real-time, high-resolution images of the developing mouse placenta during the course of pregnancy.

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Infectious diseases specialists call the medical field to be ready to deal with the impact of climate change on spreading diseases, such as malaria, Valley fever, E-coli and Lyme disease.

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Older Americans who enroll in Medicare, or change their coverage, do so as individuals, even if they’re married or live with a partner. But a new study suggests the need for more efforts to help both members of a couple weigh and choose their options together.

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Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital showed that the MYCN protein promotes a switch in the cellular state within the tumor microenvironment, with slow-growing mesenchymal cells swapping to the more dangerous and faster-growing adrenergic state.

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Researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and The University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center discovered two T-cell receptors in a single patient that recognizes the fusion and can guide T cells to kill all tumor cells carrying the hybrid protein in a mouse model.

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Monitoring levels of DNA shed by tumors and circulating in the bloodstream could help doctors accurately assess how gastroesophageal cancers are responding to treatment, and potentially predict future prognosis, suggests a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

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PPPL’s important work seeding the field of plasma physics was evident from the list of first authors in Physics of Plasmas 2023 Early Career Collection, which included four people from the Lab: Ben Isreali, Stephen Majeski, Ian Ochs and Willca Villafana.

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Researchers — including the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Min Chen and Fa Li — have developed a new model that combines several data sources and uses physics-guided machine learning to more accurately understand methane emissions in the boreal arctic region.

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New research has shown that not only are middle-aged Americans lonelier than their same-age peers in Europe, but levels of loneliness are also increasing across generations in the U.S. and Europe.

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Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have identified a yeast that could be used to prevent invasive candidiasis, a major cause of death in hospitalized and immunocompromised patients. The study, to be published March 18 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), shows that the novel yeast lives harmlessly in the intestines of mice and humans and can displace the yeast responsible for candidiasis, Candida albicans.

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Acoustic recordings of a colony of little auks reveal their nocturnal activities and offer valuable monitoring means for avian biology in the Arctic.