Feature Channels: All Journal News

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A new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has shown that aggressive lowering of blood pressure in people with hypertension reduced the risk of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). This condition, the enlargement and thickening of the walls of the heart’s main pumping chamber, is the most common complication of high blood pressure and greatly increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

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Technion researchers say a combination of metals and organic acids is an effective way to eradicate cholera, salmonella, pseudomonas, and other pathogenic bacteria. The combination also works on bacteria that attack agricultural crops.

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Distractions from technology have a detrimental effect on children’s crash risk as pedestrians and drivers.

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Northwestern University scientists have built a structurally complex material from two simple building blocks that is the lowest-density metal-organic framework ever made.

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Liver cirrhosis is the 12th leading cause of mortality worldwide and approximately half of those deaths are due to alcohol abuse. Yet apart from alcohol abstinence, there are no specific treatments to reduce the severity of alcohol-associated liver disease. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) have linked intestinal fungi to increased risk of death for patients with alcohol-related liver disease.

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Immune diseases like multiple sclerosis and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis unleash destructive waves of inflammation on the body, causing death or a lifetime of illness and physical impairment. With safe and effective treatments in short supply, scientists report in PNAS Early Edition (Proceeding of the National Academy of Science) discovery of an experimental treatment that targets an Achilles heel of activated immune cells – killing them off and stopping autoimmune damage.

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Analysis of a 3.3 million-year-old fossil skeleton reveals the most complete spinal column of any early human relative, including vertebrae, neck and rib cage. The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that portions of the human spinal structure that enable efficient walking motions were established millions of years earlier than previously thought.

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In a report published in Nano LettersArgonne researchers reveal new insights into the properties of a magnetic insulator that is a candidate for low-power device applications; their insights form early stepping-stones towards developing high-speed, low-power electronics that use electron spin rather than charge to carry information.

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Observations from the age of the dinosaurs to today shows that chemical weathering of rocks changes less with global temperatures than believed. The results upend the accepted idea for how rocks regulate a planet's temperature over millions of years.

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Tests of cells collected from the umbilical cord blood vessel walls at birth can predict death or poor pulmonary outcomes in extremely preterm infants, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

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A University of Washington-led international team of astronomers has used data gathered by the Kepler Space Telescope to observe and confirm details of the outermost of seven exoplanets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1.

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The health of children’s bones could be determined before they are born, a new University of Southampton study has shown.

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UNLV research in Russia challenges widely held understanding of past climate history; study appears in latest issue of top journal Nature Geoscience.

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Adherence to care improves when youth with HIV receive education and help navigating the system, according to study out of UAB.

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In a recent paper published online in the journal Critical Care Medicine, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute of Patient Safety and Quality led a study that demonstrated that health care providers can take steps to curb ventilator-associated events.

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Researchers have found that carbon particles released into the air from burning trees and other organic matter are much more likely than previously thought to travel to the upper levels of the atmosphere, where they can interfere with rays from the sun – sometimes cooling the air and at other times warming it.

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A study from NYU Langone Medical Center researchers published in JAMA Internal Medicine finds that initiating statins in heart-healthy older adults may not extend lifespan.

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Researchers led by the Virginia Tech College of Science discovered that deep portions of Earth’s mantle might be as hot as it was more than 2.5 billion years ago.

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Janelia Research Campus scientists have uncovered new clues about how fruit flies keep track of where they are in the world. Understanding the neural basis of navigation in flies may reveal how humans accomplish similar feats.

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U.S.-born Latino male middle school students who had familiarity with a controversial Arizona immigration enforcement bill had more difficulty exhibiting proper behavior in the classroom, such as following instructions and staying quiet, according to a new study that includes a University of Kansas researcher.

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A recent analysis of research into how so-called “sexting” may affect sexual behavior finds that it has little impact on sexual activity – but highlights significant shortcomings in the research itself.

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Research from the Keck School of Medicine of USC indicates that in mice with a KRAS mutation, which is present in 90 percent of pancreatic cancer patients, expressing only half the amount of the glucose-regulated protein GRP78 is enough to halt the earliest stage of pancreatic cancer development. This results in delayed tumor development and prolonged survival.

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Among 12- to 17-year-olds who have never used tobacco products, nearly half were considered receptive to tobacco marketing if they were able to recall or liked at least one advertisement, report researchers at University of California San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Dartmouth’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center, in a new national study. Receptivity to tobacco ads is associated with an increased susceptibility to smoking cigarettes in the future.

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A training program to improve obstetrical management reduced the number of medically unjustified caesareans and generated significant savings for the healthcare system in Quebec (Canada), in addition to improving the quality of healthcare provided to mothers and babies.

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Physicians in intensive care units routinely consider their patients’ chances of survival and recovery when guiding patients and family members in making important decisions about care plans. A new study is shedding light on the accuracy of those judgments — and for the first time also reveals the accuracy of ICU nurses’ predictions of patient outcomes. For example, the study shows that ICU physicians are better at predicting whether patients will be alive in six months than they are at predicting patients’ cognitive function in six months, and the more confident doctors are when making predictions, the more accurate those predictions tend to be.

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Physicists have searched for deviations from standard quantum mechanics, testing whether quantum mechanics requires a more complex set of mathematical rules. To do so a research team led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna designed a new photonic experiment using exotic metamaterials, which were fabricated at the University of California Berkeley. Their experiment supports standard quantum mechanics and allows the scientists to place bounds on alternative quantum theories. The results, which are published in "Nature Communications", could help to guide theoretical work in a search for a more general version of quantum mechanics.

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Cedars-Sinai researchers analyzed thousands of social media posts to determine the biggest concerns patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have about their prescribed treatments. The No. 1 patient concern: Risks of side effects from biologic medications even when risks are remote.

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A new study shows a way to keep urinary catheters from posing as much of a risk to the 1.4 million Americans currently in long-term and post-acute care. The research shows that urinary tract infections related to catheters fell by 54 percent in 404 nursing homes in 38 states that took part in a national patient safety effort.

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Children and teens exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution have evidence of a specific type of DNA damage called telomere shortening, reports a study in the May Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

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A new process triples the fraction of biomass converted to high-value products to nearly 80 percent, also tripling the expected rate of return for an investment in the technology from roughly 10 percent (for one end product) to 30 percent.

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A study from Indiana University published May 19 in the journal Science Advances finds that insects possess a naturally occurring resistance to the use of the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to prevent diseases such as malaria.

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A team of physicists has found that a coating of lithium oxide on the inside of fusion machines known as tokamaks can absorb as much deuterium as pure lithium can.

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This study shows that combining NSM-FRP flexural strengthening with U-wrap FRP shear strengthening will improve the bond without compromising on the deformability of the beam before failure.

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A new discovery may be the key to stopping shortages of vital blood-clotting cells that can represent the difference between life and death. The finding also could offer big benefits for premature babies.

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A new study of obese people suggests that changes in their brains’ reward regions make them more prone to overeating, and that women and men exhibit different brain activity related to overeating.

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An interdisciplinary study suggests that the strange creatures which lived in the Garden of the Ediacaran more than 540 million years ago before animals came on the scene may have been much more dynamic than experts have thought.

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Female faculty members hoping to advance to the highest ranks of academia face significant barriers due to male-dominated environments at colleges and universities, according to a new study of faculty at colleges of business led by a professor at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business.

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• In a new study, a higher amount of body fat was linked with an increased risk of developing chronic kidney disease. • Simple ways of measuring body size—such as waist circumference or body mass index—provided similar information on risk as more sophisticated methods, such as imaging scans, to measure different types of body fat.

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In this month’s release, find new embargoed research about: state-level firearm laws and fatal police shootings; increasing walking among airport travelers; and rates of outbreak-associated foodborne illness among incarcerated persons.

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A new study finds that citizens living in states with the weakest gun laws are more than twice as likely to be fatally shot by law enforcement compared to those living in states with the strongest gun laws.

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Infertile couples have a major opportunity to achieve a successful pregnancy without the need for IVF, thanks to new research into a 100-year-old medical technique.

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PPPL physicists have simulated the spontaneous transition of turbulence at the edge of a fusion plasma to the high-confinement mode that sustains fusion reactions. The research was achieved with the extreme-scale plasma turbulence code XGC developed at PPPL in collaboration with a nationwide team.

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An international team of astronomers have uncovered a moon around a dwarf planet by using the combined power of three space observatories, including archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Called 2007 OR₁₀, it is the third-largest dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt.

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By analyzing both the genes that control color detecting photoreceptors and the structural components of the eye itself, University of California, Irvine evolutionary biologists have discovered male and female butterflies of one particular species have the unique ability to see the world differently from each another because of sex-related evolutionary traits.

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After analyzing the blood of a survivor of the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak, a team of scientists from academia, industry and the government has discovered the first natural human antibodies that can neutralize and protect animals against all three major disease-causing ebolaviruses. The findings, published online today in the journal Cell, could lead to the first broadly effective ebolavirus therapies and vaccines.

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For the first time, UNC School of Medicine researchers show that exercising burns the fat found within bone marrow and offers evidence that this process improves bone quality and the amount of bone in a matter of weeks.

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Astronomers using ALMA have made the first complete millimeter-wavelength image of the ring of dusty debris surrounding the young star Fomalhaut.

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A study published May 17 in the journal Genome Biology shows how highly popular custom genetically engineered animal models are easily generated using a new patent-pending technology called Easi-CRISPR.

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The story of humanity’s vital – and fragile – relationship with the sun has been locked inside our teeth for hundreds of thousands of years. A new method is starting to tease out answers to major questions of evolution and migration, using clues hidden just under the enamel.

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Six months after knee replacement surgery, pain outcomes were not as good for patients who previously took prescription opioids, according to a study in the May 17 issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.