Commonly used cholesterol-lowering statins may reduce the risk of death and severity of COVID-19 disease, suggests a study of more than 38,000 patients being presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2022 annual meeting.
Adaptations to a program that helps ensure the best possible outcomes from surgery allowed eligible patients to receive their hip and knee replacement surgeries during the COVID-19 pandemic without spending the night in the hospital.
This glittering view of the Pillars of Creation was delivered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera – and it begs to be examined pixel by pixel. The scene may look both familiar and entirely new – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope viewed it first in 1995 and followed up in 2014, and many other telescopes have stared deeply at this scene. But this is the first time an observatory has delivered such detailed data in near-infrared light. Newly formed stars pop out in shades of pink, red, and crimson. Still-forming stars that remain hidden deep in dusty pillars resemble molten lava, and fully formed blue and yellow stars sprinkle the scene. Where are the galaxies that “photobomb” many of Webb’s images? The pillars are located directly in front of our Milky Way galaxy’s disk, which blocks our view of most galaxies that lie behind it. It is also lit up by the collective light from the packed “party” of stars. With these new data, researchers will be able to update complex m
On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA conducted a first-of-its-kind experiment, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), designed to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid in the world’s first-ever in-space test for planetary defense. NASA declared the mission was successful in altering the orbit of Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet of Didymos. However, there is still much to learn about the system. Follow-up observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are already revealing the clearest image of a stunning surprise— a newly developed second tail of ejecta.
Astronomers looking into the early universe have made a surprising discovery using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope: a cluster of massive galaxies in the process of forming around an extremely red quasar. The result will expand our understanding of how galaxy clusters in the early universe came together and formed the cosmic web we see today.
The more hours someone works each week in a stressful job, the more their risk of depression rises, a study in new doctors finds. Working 90 or more hours a week was associated with changes in depression symptom scores three times larger than the change in depression symptoms among those working 40 to 45 hours a week. And a higher percentage of those who worked a large number of hours had scores high enough to qualify for a diagnosis of moderate to severe depression
A new precision measurement of the proton’s electric polarizability performed at Jefferson Lab has confirmed an unexplained bump in the data. The proton’s electric polarizability shows how susceptible the proton is to deformation, or stretching, in an electric field. Like size or charge, the electric polarizability is a fundamental property of proton structure. The data bump was widely thought to be a fluke when seen in earlier measurements, so this new, more precise measurement confirms the presence of the anomaly and signals that an unknown facet of the strong force may be at work. The research has just been published in the journal Nature.
In Star Trek, the Borg are a ruthless, hive-minded collective that assimilate other beings with the intent of taking over the galaxy. Here on nonfictional planet Earth, Borgs are DNA packages that could help humans fight climate change.
Currently, the U.S. leads western nations in infant mortality and cardiac birth defects are a leading cause. New research harnesses the power of AI to detect dangerous cardiac abnormalities prenatally. Resulting medical protocols implemented at birth in those at-risk could go a long way toward saving lives.
A vaccine that could protect against new variants of SARS-CoV-2 and also potentially protect against other coronaviruses is one step closer to reality thanks to College of Medicine researchers.
When states want to gauge quail populations, the process can be grueling, time-consuming and expensive. It means spending hours in the field listening for calls. Or leaving a recording device in the field to catch what sounds are made—only to spend hours later listening to that audio. Then, repeating this process until there’s enough information to start making population estimates.
But a new model developed by researchers at the University of Georgia aims to streamline this process. By using artificial intelligence to analyze terabytes of recordings for quail calls, the process gives wildlife managers the ability to gather the data they need in a matter of minutes.
A new analysis led by researchers with the University of California has found the 2020 wildfires in the state, the most disastrous wildfire year on record, put twice as much greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere as the total reduction in such pollutants in California between 2003-2019.
An independent panel report, based on the written testimonies of 485 women, men and children, and eyewitness accounts by international journalists, tells the story of those who survived extreme violence at the hands of the police and local gangs before and after the European Champions League Final in Paris, May 2022.
Compiled by five leading authorities in their respective fields, including author of the ground-breaking report into the Hillsborough disaster, Professor Emeritus Phil Scraton from the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast, the report, “Treated with Contempt": An Independent Panel Report into Fans' Experiences Before, During and After the 2022 Champions League Final in Paris, details survivors’ written evidence submitted in the days after the event.
A new algorithm has been found to identify images of alcohol in electronic media with a high degree of accuracy. Possible applications for this algorithm include public health research to quantify exposure to images of alcohol and mobile or web applications to allow individuals to filter unwanted exposure to online alcohol advertising or alcohol-related content. The development and testing of the algorithm are described in a paper published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. The algorithm has been made publicly available at no charge.
The classic view of pain is that it protects by detecting and signaling the presence of harmful agents, but new research shows pain can shield the gut more directly.
Experiments in mice show that activated pain neurons induce intestinal cells to release mucus that coats and protects the intestine both under normal conditions and during inflammation.
The findings raise concerns about long-term use of certain medications that suppress protective pain signaling in conditions such as colitis and migraine.
Scientists working on a solution for plastic waste have developed a two-step chemical and biological process to break down and upcycle mixed plastics into valuable bioproducts.
Patients who have surgery to repair bone fractures typically receive a type of injectable blood thinner, low-molecular-weight heparin, to prevent life-threatening blood clots, but a new clinical trial found that over-the-counter aspirin is just as effective.
A new poll shows that 48% of people age 50 to 80 have bought at least one kind of at-home health test, including 32% who had bought COVID-19 tests, 17% who had bought a DNA test, and lower percentages who had bought other types of tests. But use of such direct-to-consumer medical tests varies greatly by age, race/ethnicity, marital status, income and years of education.
A new University of Washington-led study has found that even in remote, rarely visited national parks, the presence of even just a few humans impacts the activity of wildlife that live there. Nearly any level of human activity in a protected area like a national park can alter the behavior of animals there, the study found.
A number of studies have suggested that eating a healthy diet may reduce a person’s risk of dementia, but a new study has found that two diets including the Mediterranean diet are not linked to a reduced risk of dementia. The study is published in the October 12, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A national study suggests that risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as age, smoking and diabetes – not preexisting heart disease – are the main contributors to death and poor outcomes for critically ill COVID-19 patients. Researchers say the findings reinforce COVID-19 as a pulmonary disease with multi-organ injury related to systemic inflammation. However, they conclude results should not minimize the fact that patients with cardiovascular disease are still at risk for death due to COVID-19, as they have a high burden of risk factors for the disease.
The environment could be playing a critical role in the expression of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in women living in Alabama, as compared to women in California, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Using a wearable activity tracker to count and increase the number and intensity of steps taken daily can reduce the risk of several common, chronic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and sleep apnea, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers report this week in the journal Nature Medicine.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have made a unique measurement that indicates a jet, plowing through space at speeds greater than 99.97% the speed of light. It was propelled by the titanic collision between two neutron stars. This is an artist's impression of two neutron stars colliding.
As more patients with cancer have their tumors genomically profiled, and more therapies targeting genomic alterations enter clinical trials, the task of connecting patients to trials for which they are eligible can be especially challenging. A computer platform developed at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute makes the matching process both easier and faster, its designers report in a new study.
Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine collaborated on a recently published paper that provides new guidance on inclusion of underrepresented populations in genetics research.
Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have engineered duckweed to produce high yields of oil. The team added genes to one of nature's fastest growing aquatic plants to "push" the synthesis of fatty acids, "pull" those fatty acids into oils, and "protect" the oil from degradation.
Today, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) formally unveiled ESnet6, the newest generation of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) high-performance network dedicated to science. The hybrid in person and virtual event was held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and live-streamed on streaming.lbl.gov.
Predicting the rupture of aneurysms is crucial for medical prevention and treatment. As aspect ratio and size ratio increase and an aneurysm expands, the stress applied against the aneurysm walls and the time blood spends within it increase. This leads the probability of rupture to rise. In Physics of Fluids, researchers develop a patient-specific mathematical model to examine what aneurysm parameters influence rupture risk prior to surgery. Computed tomography scans are fed into the model, which reconstructs the geometry and blood flow of the aneurysm. It then uses equations to describe the fluid flow, generating information about the blood vessel walls and blood flow patterns.
Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in Alabama may be more likely to have excessive hair growth and insulin resistance, whereas women with PCOS in California may be more likely to have higher testosterone levels, according to new research published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
New COVID-19 variants could potentially be contained where they arise using genetic sequencing, a new study from the University of Georgia has found. But it will require global cooperation. Published in PNAS Nexus, the study found that standard methods that first assess a new variant’s severity are too slow to stop its spread. Next-generation genetic sequencing, however, offers a feasible alternative to spot new variants with enough time to contain variants where they first appear.
Researchers attach green fluorescent protein (GFP), a protein that changes light from one color into another, to other proteins to observe how and where cells produce those proteins and thus how cells express genes. However, the use of GFP is time consuming and requires expensive equipment. Researchers have now designed and developed a special type of GFP visible with the unaided eye and a simple black light.
In the procedure, the physician uses a handheld transducer placed on the skin to direct ultrasound waves towards the stone. The ultrasound can then be used to move and reposition the stones to promote their passage, a process called ultrasound propulsion, or the break up the stone, a technique called burst wave lithotripsy (BWL).
A new technique combining two types of focused ultrasound waves offers a promising approach for treatment of urinary stones located in the ureter, according to a feasibility study in The Journal of Urology®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
Despite decades of effort to change emergency care at American hospitals and cope with ever-growing numbers of patient visits, the system is showing increasing signs of severe strain, according to two new studies of patients leaving without being seen or waiting in emergency department for hours for a hospital bed.
National Eye Institute researchers mapped the organization of human retinal cell chromatin, the fibers that package 3 billion nucleotide-long DNA molecules into compact structures that fit into chromosomes within each cell’s nucleus. The resulting comprehensive gene regulatory network provides insights into regulation of gene expression in general, and in retinal function, in both rare and common eye diseases. The study published in Nature Communications.
Everyone knows that the Computer-an artificial intelligence (AI)-like entity-on a Star Trek spaceship does everything from brewing tea to compiling complex analyses of flux data. But how are they used at real research facilities? How can AI agents-computer programs that can act based on a perceived environment-help scientists discover next-generation batteries or quantum materials? Three staff members at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) described how AI agents support scientists using the facility's research tools.
An 8-year study of nearly 1300 low-income adolescents in Los Angeles found that students who attended high performing charter high schools were much less likely to engage in risky substance use by the time they reached age 21. Males who attended the high-performing schools also had better physical health and lower obesity rates as young adults while females had substantially worse outcomes in those two areas.
An exploratory study suggests that people who eat more foods with omega-3 fatty acids in midlife may have better thinking skills and even better brain structure than people who eat few foods with the fatty acids. The study is published in the October 5, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish such as salmon, sardines, lake trout and albacore tuna. They are also found in foods fortified with the fatty acids or supplements.
Using a new power sector model, a team of researchers, including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, have proposed a method for Europe to eliminate natural gas imports from Russia.
An international team of researchers has demonstrated that among patients hospitalized for influenza, those who were vaccinated had less severe infections, including reducing the odds for children requiring admittance to an intensive care unit by almost half.
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have recently demonstrated an automated process for identifying and exploring promising new materials by combining machine learning (ML) and high performance computing.
Understanding and integrating patients’ cultural beliefs into cancer treatment plans may help improve their acceptance of and adherence to treatment in multicultural settings. Researchers examined traditional Maya healers’ understanding of cancer and published their findings online today in the Journal of Global Oncology.
It’s a tale of two tests: one for early signs of cervical cancer, the other for the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia. But a change in the recommended schedule for one may have dramatically lowered the chances that young women would get the other, a new study finds.
For the first time, advanced technologies made it possible to read parts of a damaged scroll that is at least 1,500 years old, discovered inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi in Israel. High-resolution scanning and UK Professor Brent Seales' revolutionary virtual unwrapping tool revealed verses from the Book of Leviticus.
A new drug acts as a roadblock for malaria, curing mice of established infection, according to researchers. Treatment was not associated with obvious side effects, suggesting that the drug may also be safe and effective in humans.
Anyone who’s ever noticed a water puddle drying in the sun has seen an environment that may have driven the type of chemical reactions that scientists believe were critical to the formation of life on the early Earth.