Month: October 2024

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different viewpoints. The results inform future plans to study like types of planets around other stars. Astronomers used Uranus as a proxy for similar planets beyond our…

Multimaterial 3D printing enables makers to fabricate customized devices with multiple colors and varied textures. But the process can be time-consuming and wasteful because existing 3D printers must switch between multiple nozzles, often discarding one material before they can start depositing another. Researchers from MIT and Delft University of Technology have now introduced a more…

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalization in young children due to respiratory complications such as bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Yet little is understood about why some children develop only mild symptoms while others develop severe disease. To better understand what happens in these cases, clinician-scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding…

Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. The results suggest that without ‘unmelted’ asteroids, there may not have been enough of these compounds on Earth for life to emerge. Volatiles are elements or compounds that change into vapour at relatively low temperatures….

Hydrogen-burning internal combustion engines offer great promise in the fight against climate change because they are powerful without emitting any earth-warming carbon. They can power heavy-duty trucks and buses and are suited for off-road and agricultural equipment and backup power generators, providing cleaner alternatives to diesel engines. Yet they are not entirely clean. They emit…

A new study has found some cancers to be slightly more frequent in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) than in people without MS. The study is published in the October 9, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Types of cancers found to have a small increased risk…

Male fruit flies have several tricks for finding a mate, from sensing pheromones in the dark to relying on visual cues in the light. Now, new research reveals that these tiny suitors are leveraging a flexible network of modular brain circuits to quickly adapt to different mating signals. The study, published in Nature, is the…

A Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor who has devoted his career to resolving the mysteries of higher mathematics has solved two separate, fundamental problems that have perplexed mathematicians for decades. The solutions to these long-standing problems could further enhance our understanding of symmetries of structures and objects in nature and science, and of long-term behavior of…

As tools powered by artificial intelligence increasingly make their way into health care, the latest research from UC Santa Cruz Politics Department doctoral candidate Lucia Vitale takes stock of the current landscape of promises and anxieties. Proponents of AI envision the technology helping to manage health care supply chains, monitor disease outbreaks, make diagnoses, interpret…

A research team led by the University of California, Irvine has engineered an efficient new enzyme that can produce a synthetic genetic material called threose nucleic acid. The ability to synthesize artificial chains of TNA, which is inherently more stable than DNA, advances the discovery of potentially more powerful, precise therapeutic options to treat cancer…

Drug discovery is much like working a jigsaw puzzle. The chemical compounds behind drug molecules must be shaped to fit with the proteins in our bodies to produce therapeutic effects. That requirement for a meticulous fit means the creation of new drugs is extremely complex and time-consuming. To speed up the puzzle-fitting process, researchers at…

Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold over the last four decades, new research shows. The Antarctic Peninsula, like many polar regions, is warming faster than the global average, with extreme heat events in Antarctica becoming more common. The new study — by the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire, and the…

In the first study to report real-world outcomes from ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T therapy for multiple myeloma, patients experienced efficacy and safety results similar to those seen in clinical trials, according to results published today in Blood. Of 236 patients who received cilta-cel infusions at 16 U.S. medical centers in 2022,…

Whenever cells divide, there is a high risk of damage to the genetic material. After all, the cell has to duplicate its entire genetic material and copy billions of genetic letters before it divides. This repeatedly results in “reading errors” of the genome. However, other factors are also responsible for the accumulation of DNA damage…

In new research, a team led by University of Cincinnati researchers has identified a potential new way to make radiation more effective and improve outcomes for patients with lung cancer that has spread to the brain. The study, led by first author Debanjan Bhattacharya, PhD, was recently published in the journal Cancers. Research background According…

A research team from the University of California, Irvine is the first to reveal that a molecule in the brain — ophthalmic acid — unexpectedly acts like a neurotransmitter similar to dopamine in regulating motor function, offering a new therapeutic target for Parkinson’s and other movement diseases. In the study, published in the October issue…

Researchers at Virginia Tech are using wrist-worn voice recorders to capture real-world data to better understand what happens when people lose their balance. The study, led by Michael Madigan in the College of Engineering, builds on years of his own foundational work and prior research conducted by the University of Michigan Medical School. “In the…

A new study by researchers at the University of Arizona College of Medicine — Phoenix and the University of California Davis Health identified a new target for developing a therapy to treat atrial fibrillation, the most common type of abnormal heart rhythm. Atrial fibrillation, commonly called AFib or AF, causes about 1 in 7 strokes,…