Radiocarbon dating is a key tool archaeologists use to determine the age of plants and objects made with organic material. But new research shows that commonly accepted radiocarbon dating standards can miss the mark — calling into question historical timelines.
Good teamwork begins with a cup of coffee for everyone, a new study suggests. Researchers found that people gave more positive reviews for their group’s performance on a task – and their own contribution – if they drank caffeinated coffee beforehand.
New research shows companies cut funding for research and development in response to a tax imposed on medical devices as part of the Affordable Care Act. The Iowa State study found the tax reduced R&D investment by $34 million and also affected sales revenue, gross margins and earnings.
Results of a large-scale study suggest that the oral diabetes drug metformin is safe for most diabetics who also have chronic kidney disease (CKD). The study of more than 150,000 adults by Johns Hopkins Medicine investigators found that metformin’s association with the development of a life-threatening condition called lactic acidosis was seen only among patients with severely decreased kidney function.
Embolization -- the use of various techniques to cut off the blood vessels that feed tissue growth -- has gained traction over the past few decades to treat cancerous tumors, and one specific version is gas embolotherapy. During this process, the blood supply is cut off using acoustic droplet vaporization, which uses microscopic gas bubbles induced by exposure to ultrasonic waves. Researchers have discovered that these bubbles could also be used as potential drug delivery systems. The researchers report their findings this week in Applied Physics Letters.
Wind turbines are a source of clean renewable energy, but some people who live nearby describe the shadow flicker, the audible sounds and the subaudible sound pressure levels as “annoying.” They claim this nuisance negatively impacts their quality of life. Researchers in Canada set out to investigate how residential distance from the wind turbines affects people’s health; they report their new analysis in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
All plants take up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. During this changeover, the plants emit an energy “glow” that is not visible to the human eye, but can be detected by satellites in space. Now, researchers at the University of New Hampshire have taken that one step further. By using satellite data from different major land-based ecosystems around the globe, they have found that the photosynthesis glow is the same across all vegetation, no matter the location. This first-of-its-kind global analysis could have significance in providing more accurate data for scientists working to model carbon cycle and eventually help better project climate change.
Copper exposure’s link Alzheimer’s disease, the effects of consumer microbials on the colon, a potential prostate-based activation of a carcinogen in cooked meat, and the impact of hydraulic fracturing mixtures on the immune system featured in latest issue of Toxicological Sciences.
Medicare patients who undergo mammography screening also are more likely to follow up with other recommended preventive services such as cervical cancer screenings or Pap smear, bone mass measurement or a flu vaccine, as compared to unscreened women.
Regulatory changes have paved the way for a huge increase in the number of nurse practitioners who serve as primary care providers in rural areas. They now account for 1 in 4 medical care providers in practices in rural areas – a 43.2 percent increase overall from 2008 to 2016.
Two strategies that research indicates would help alleviate America’s opioid crisis lack widespread public support, according to a study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Penn Medicine researchers are calling for greater precision in Medicare performance reporting for patients with gastrointestinal bleeding following an evaluation of patients with the condition.
A new study in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology shows that a greater desire by older asthma patients for involvement in medical decision-making was associated with a better quality of life
Dinosaur-age fossilised remains of tiny organisms normally found in the sea have been discovered in inland, arid Australia – suggesting the area was, for a short time at least, inundated by sea water 40 million years before Australia’s large inland sea existed.
By instructing key immune system cells to accept transplanted insulin-producing islets, researchers have opened a potentially new pathway for treating type 1 diabetes. If the approach is ultimately successful in humans, it could allow type 1 diabetes to be treated without the long-term complications of immune system suppression.
A new study finds stable patients on blood thinners may not need to get their blood drawn as often as they currently do. Researchers were able to increase the number of people waiting longer than five weeks in between their INR blood draws from less than half (41.8%) to more than two-thirds (69.3%).
At the threshold of what we call consciousness is a brain function that makes you feel confidently aware that you are actually seeing what you see. Psychologists at Georgia Tech have observed mechanisms involved in making it work.
Just beyond the northwest edge of the vast Greenland Ice Sheet, Northwestern University researchers have discovered lake mud that beat tough odds by surviving the last ice age. The mud, and remains of common flies nestled within it, record two interglacial periods in northwest Greenland. Although researchers have long known these two periods — the early Holocene and Last Interglacial — experienced warming in the Arctic due to changes in the Earth’s orbit, the mix of fly species preserved from these times shows that Greenland was even warmer than previously thought.
Children living in neighborhoods that are not conducive to walking are more likely to develop asthma and to continue to have this condition through later childhood, according to a new study published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
Our daily lives revolve around the internet, whether it’s personal contact, news or the sharing of political views. As such, there remains significant work to do so the internet can deal with the real challenges it faces, rather than ones it fails to consider, an internet privacy expert at Washington University in St. Louis argues in a new paper.
A new study by University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers has found that T cells, a type of white blood cell and an essential part of the immune system, are sufficient by themselves to establish and maintain an HIV infection in the brain.
Eight million largely preventable deaths from treatable diseases cost $6 trillion in lost economic welfare in low- and middle-income countries in 2015.
If current conditions persist, low- and middle-income countries could lose collectively $11 trillion in gross domestic product by 2030, or 2.6 percent of total GDP in low-income countries.
New analysis believed to be first to quantify global economic toll due to inadequate access to high-quality medical care.
Findings stem from analysis of diseases in 130 low- and middle-income countries that are treatable with approaches commonly available in higher-income settings.
High school seniors who use heroin commonly use multiple other drugs—and not just opioids, according to a study by the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at NYU Meyers College of Nursing.
A new study that reconstructs the deep history of our planet’s relationship to the moon shows that 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours. This is at least in part because the moon was closer and changed the way the Earth spun around its axis.
Clinical trials show that an immune checkpoint inhibitor shrinks the tumors of nearly half of patients with an incurable, advanced form of a common skin cancer, an international team led by a researcher at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in the New England Journal of Medicine.
An experimental drug that blocks abnormal neural communication after spinal cord injury could one day be the key to improving quality of life by improving bladder function, new research suggests.
A research team led by Jigang Wang of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory has developed a new quantum switching scheme that gives them access to new and hidden states of matter. The journal Nature Materials has just published a paper about the discovery.
Diseased cells such as metastatic cancer cells have markedly different mechanical properties that can be used to improve targeted drug uptake, according to a team of researchers at Penn State.
A major international study published in the journal Pediatrics has found that 2.6 percent of infants and children hospitalized for stroke die in the hospital.
A Rutgers-led team of physicists has demonstrated a way to conduct electricity between transistors without energy loss, opening the door to low-power electronics and, potentially, quantum computing that would be far faster than today’s computers. Their findings, which involved using a special mix of materials with magnetic and insulator properties, are published online in Nature Physics.
Those particles that can be in two places at the same time and are not just particles but also waves appear to move in even weirder ways than previously thought. Theoretical physicists at Georgia Tech applied extreme computing power for a week to predict the movements of fermions by including quantum optics, or light-like, ideas in their mathematical, theoretical modeling.
When bosses yell at you, your day can be ruined. It can also ruin theirs though, and can lead to major behavioral changes that flip their attitudes at work. New research from Michigan State University took prior workplace studies, which focused primarily on the impact abusive bosses have on their employees, and refocused the lens to see how the bosses respond to their own abusive behavior.
Researchers have gained new insights into the virus that causes hepatitis B – a life-threatening and incurable infection. The discovery reveals previously unknown details about the shell of the vigenetic blueprint and could lead to new drugs to treat the infection.
Research from the University of Illinois at Chicago has found that some of the genes affected by alcohol and inflammation are also implicated in processes that clear amyloid beta — the protein that forms globs of plaques in the brain and which contributes to neuronal damage and the cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Two chemistry researchers from Missouri University of Science and Technology are part of an international team that has designed a new metal-organic framework that exhibits dramatic improvements in electron mobility, which could lead to new applications for fuels cells, batteries and other technologies.
A UCLA-led study has found how colon cancer alters its genes during development in order to avoid detection by the immune system, creating a specific genetic imprint in the process.
Today two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced a discovery that finally links the two heaviest known particles: the top quark and the Higgs boson. The CMS and ATLAS experiments have seen simultaneous production of both particles during a rare subatomic process.
A study by UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center's Ronald Chen, MD, MPH, and colleagues assessed whether monitoring prostate cancer patients following treatment with a PSA test every three months versus once a year would provide a long-term survival benefit.
In a new article published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Donald Behringer and one of his co-authors, post-doctoral researcher Jamie Bojko, both of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, point out many ways organisms try to escape diseases.
The ancient people of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, were able to move massive stone hats and place them on top of statues with little effort and resources, using a parbuckling technique, according to new research from a collaboration that included investigators from Binghamton University, State University at New York.
Rutgers Global Health Institute’s director discusses how rejecting scientific facts can undermine progress in public health – and how the medical profession can further public understanding of science
n a finding that suggests the potential for practice change that would reduce the use of antibiotics in dermatology, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found the diuretic drug spironolactone may be just as effective as antibiotics for the treatment of women’s acne.
Vaccinating asthmatic pre-schoolers against influenza could dramatically reduce their risk of being hospitalized after an attack, Canadian researchers find.