Feature Channels: All Journal News

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For the first time, researchers have linked radiation-damaged thyroid glands to poor surgical outcomes. The solution may be as simple as a common hormone supplement. Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a link between low thyroid hormone levels and wound healing complications. MORE FROM THE LAB: Subscribe to our weekly newsletter The retrospective study looked at 182 patients with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma who were first treated with radiation, but ultimately required a total laryngectomy, or removal of the voice box.

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An Iowa State University research team is testing a new online tool to provide food to those in need by reducing food waste.

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Article describes use of new diagnostics to advance understanding of the plasma nanosynthesis of widely used nanoparticles.

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A study of domestic violence victims finds that Hispanic women seek legal help more often than non-Hispanic white women, and the two groups have different reasons for remaining in abusive relationships.

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New research from Arizona State University shows that using a 3-dimensional layer of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) can mitigate dendrite formation and stands to both dramatically extend battery life and diminish safety risks.

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Stigmas, attitudes of self-reliance and misattributing symptoms led a group of young adults experiencing their first episode of psychosis to delay seeking treatment, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Compared to white Americans, African Americans are disproportionately affected by mental illnesses. New York University professor Norissa Williams found one healthcare model which can help change that and increase access and utilization of mental health services by African Americans. In a review published in the Best Practices in Mental Health journal, Williams found that integrating multiple sectors of care (e.g., primary care, behavioral health care, substance abuse services, etc.) into one health system is the best approach to providing African Americans with access to mental health care services.

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Using data from a large ovarian cancer registry, a research team from Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center uncovered a link between testicular cancer and familial ovarian cancer that may be attributable to genetic factors on the X chromosome.

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A study of mouse healing after severe heart attacks focused on the heart and spleen, measuring types and numbers of immune cells; types and amounts of lipid signaling compounds; expression of enzymes that produce those signaling compounds; and which enzymes are key to resolution of inflammation.

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Whether you pick low-carb, low fat or another diet plan, scientific research indicates each can help some people achieve modest long-term weight loss with potential improvement in health risks, according to the Scientific Statement the Endocrine Society issued today on managing obesity.

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Federal researchers have discovered that severe stress or trauma early in life could actually change how the brain responds to stress hormones, essentially "re-wiring" the brain for later neuropathological disorders, according to a study, "A role for corticotrophin releasing factor signaling in the lateral habenula and its modulation by early life stress," published in Science Signaling, March 6.

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A new study shows that creative people have neither a greater nor lesser ability to override impulses or engage in goal-directed thought.

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Astronomers have used Hubble to uncover a vast, complex dust structure, about 150 billion miles across, enveloping the young star HR 4796A. A bright, narrow, inner ring of dust is already known to encircle the star and may have been corralled by the gravitational pull of an unseen giant planet. This newly discovered huge structure around the system may have implications for what this yet-unseen planetary system looks like around the 8-million-year-old star, which is in its formative years of planet construction.

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There are many factors that account for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory, but Americans would be doing a disservice to their understanding of the country’s political system by ignoring Trump’s 14-year starring role as a reality television personality, according to an associate professor in the University at Buffalo Department of Psychology. Shira Gabriel is lead author of a forthcoming study which is the first to scientifically examine how viewers’ parasocial bonds with Trump, formed through his television shows, “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice,” contributed to his being elected to the nation’s highest office.

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SBP researchers have discovered that accumulation of ceramides—a type of lipid (fat)— plays a crucial role in lipotoxic cardiomyopathy (LCM)—a heart condition that often occurs in patients with diabetes and obesity. The study, published today in Cell Reports, also identified several potential therapeutic targets that could prevent or reverse the effects of LCM.

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An interdisciplinary team of scientists at University of Utah Health are using animals' unique traits to pinpoint regions of the human genome that might affect health. The results of this project are available in the March 6 issue of the journal Cell Reports.

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A new study conducted by researchers at The Wistar Institute revealed how a key protein residing in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) helps cells respond to stress. This process is especially important for B cells to respond to severe stress conditions and their ability to produce antibodies. The research was published online in the Journal of Cell Biology.

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A sizable percentage of elderly patients with blood-related cancers such as leukemia and multiple myeloma are apt to show signs of diminished cognitive functioning

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Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have used the gene-editing technology CRISPR to engineer human T cells that can attack human T cell cancers. The new approach also eliminates a dangerous side-effect called graft-versus-host disease.

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A study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) found a discrepancy between doctor reviews provided by hospital websites and those posted on independent physician rating websites such as Healthgrades.com and Vitals.com.

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New research from The University of Texas at Dallas supports the growing consensus that pain begins differently for men and women at the cellular level.

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Researchers have found strong evidence that environmental exposures, including air pollution, affect gene expressions associated with respiratory diseases much more than genetic ancestry. The study, published today in Nature Communications, analyzed more than 1.6 million data points from biological specimens, health questionnaires and environmental datasets, making this study one of the largest ever to examine the relationship between gene expression and environmental stimuli. These findings represent a groundbreaking use of big data to uncover the environmental factors that are behind diseases and inform strategies for prevention, an approach that would apply to a number of diseases, including cancer.

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Researchers at the National University of Singapore have created a new platform with the potential to extract tiny circulating biomarkers of disease from patient blood. This simple, fast and convenient technique could help realize liquid biopsy diagnostics -- a less invasive procedure than the current gold standard: tumor biopsies. Details of the new technique, which utilizes standard laboratory equipment, are reported in this week's Biomicrofluidics.

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Calcium ions enable cells to communicate with one another, allowing neurons to interact, muscles to contract, and the heart's muscle cells to synchronize and beat. To better understand these processes, researchers often use computer simulations, but accurate models are challenging and computationally expensive. In this week’s The Journal of Chemical Physics, researchers demonstrate how a straightforward modification in a computer model leads to highly accurate simulations, which serve as powerful tools for studying a range of biological processes.

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While it may be the era of supercomputers and “big data,” without smart methods to mine all that data, it’s only so much digital detritus. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have come up with a novel machine learning method that enables scientists to derive insights from systems of previously intractable complexity in record time.

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Published in the journal Risk Analysis, the study, “Mitigating sports injury risks using Internet of Things and analytic approaches,” outlines how injury risk screening procedures can be administered using wireless devices, such as smartphones, connected to a cloud server. This connection between phones, computers and other devices is what researchers refer to as the Internet of Things. Athletic performance isn’t the only casualty of sports injuries. These injuries pose economic burdens on athletes and their families and can have long-lasting effects on an athlete’s quality of life. To help reduce the risk of injury, researchers at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga have developed a framework that measures an athlete’s risk of injury using Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

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A new study from the University of Iowa finds firms headquartered in more religiously observant counties have higher credit ratings and lower debt costs, evidence that suggests lenders and bondholders consider the company’s culture when deciding whether to give them money.

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Roundtable will update exercise recommendations for cancer survivors, add prevention guidance

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By measuring the sagging of the vaginal walls in more than a thousand volunteers for up to nine years annually, a team of Baltimore physicians reports the creation of a long-awaited baseline measure of the rate of progression of so-called pelvic organ prolapse. The baseline, they say, should provide a foundation for reliable studies and a more rational search for factors that prevent or ease the condition.

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Bacteria could be programmed to efficiently produce drugs, thanks to breakthrough research into synthetic biology using engineering principles, from the University of Warwick and the University of Surrey. Led by the Warwick Integrative Synthetic Biology Centre at Warwick’s School of Engineering and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey, new research has discovered how to dynamically manage the allocation of essential resources inside engineered cells - advancing the potential of synthetically programming cells to combat disease and produce new drugs.

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Immunotherapy does not work for a majority of cancer patients. Preventing or reversing metabolic exhaustion in cancer-killing T-cells could boost its effectiveness.

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Researchers in France have discovered that, though a tattoo may be forever, the skin cells that carry the tattoo pigment are not. Instead, the researchers say, the cells can pass on the pigment to new cells when they die. The study, which will be published March 6 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests ways to improve the ability of laser surgery to remove unwanted tattoos.

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Anthelmintic drug already approved to treat infections of pinworm parasite was shown to effectively impair both mesothelioma cell growth and migration.

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For years, scientists have argued about whether managing both nitrogen and phosphorus – versus managing strictly phosphorus or just nitrogen – would control harmful algal blooms.

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A team of University of Georgia researchers has developed a new way to breed plants with better traits. By introducing a human protein into the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, researchers found that they could selectively activate silenced genes already present within the plant.

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By studying mice in late adolescence, Johns Hopkins University researchers have discovered that the rapid bone growth associated with puberty is slowed not only by fewer cartilage cell divisions but also by the “aging” of bone cell precursor cells. After investigating the signaling molecules that promote this transition, the scientists conclude that some weak and brittle bone conditions in both children and adults may be due to the cells’ premature “retirement” caused by glucocorticoid treatments given during puberty to treat chronic inflammation resulting from rheumatoid disorders and other diseases.

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Increasing the body’s ability to produce lipids in the lungs after damage prevents the progression of pulmonary fibrosis in preliminary studies.

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High in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, the climate is so dry and cold that glaciers shrank during the last ice age. Dating of rock deposits shows how glaciers in this less-studied region can behave very differently as the climate shifts.

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A new CU Boulder study shows that one hour of bright light at night nearly eliminates melatonin production in young children and keeps it suppressed an hour after light's out. Structural differences may make children's immature eyes more vulnerable to body clock disruption from light.

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Scientists at Queen’s University Belfast have led an international team to the ground-breaking discovery that magnetic waves crashing through the Sun may be key to heating its atmosphere and propelling the solar wind.

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Despite claims that helmets do not protect the cervical spine during a motorcycle crash and may even increase the risk of injury, researchers from the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison found that, during an accident, helmet use lowers the likelihood of cervical spine injury (CSI), particularly fractures of the cervical vertebrae.

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Research by San Francisco State professor Ryan Howell says it’s what we buy that really matters to our well-being.

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A study published in the March 5 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) describes how the supercomputers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego were used to simulate the merger of a G-protein “mimetic nanobody” to a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), the largest and most diverse group of membrane receptors in animals, plants, fungi, and protozoa.

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The number of pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admissions for opioid overdoses doubled between 2004 and 2015, despite continuing efforts to curb misuse of the addictive painkillers among adults, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago Medicine published in the journal Pediatrics.

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In a small study, doctors at Johns Hopkins have successfully transplanted 10 hepatitis C-infected kidneys into patients without hepatitis C and prevented the patients from becoming infected by hepatitis C. The success of these transplants could mean more organs being available for the nearly 100,000 people in the U.S. currently waiting for a kidney transplant.

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Researchers profiled the epigenomic landscape of Alzheimer’s brains, specifically in one of the regions affected early in AD, the lateral temporal lobe. They compared these to both younger and elderly cognitively normal control subjects. The team described the genome-wide enrichment of a chemical modification of histone proteins that regulates the compaction of chromosomes in the nucleus. Changes along the genome in disease versus normal aging brains may signify places for future drug development.

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University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have identified genetic clues that explain how breast cancer spreads, or metastasizes – findings that may lead to better treatments or approaches to prevent its spread at the onset.

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Analysis of research from 1991 to 2015 on talking on the phone while driving can inform lawmakers in crafting driver safety legislation.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) invested more than $27 billion in biomedical research through competitive grants during its 2017 fiscal year. Those grants were awarded based on scores assigned by, and conversation between, expert peer reviewers. This peer review process is a bedrock feature of doling out dollars for scientific projects with careful deliberation. But new findings by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers suggest that reviewers are unable to differentiate the great proposals from the merely good ones.

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In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by atmospheric scientists Logan Mitchell and John Lin report that suburban sprawl increases CO2 emissions more than similar population growth in a developed urban core.