A new COVID variant is climbing the ranks in the U.S., becoming the third-most common strain of the summer. Variant XFG, colloquially known as "Stratus," was first detected in Southeast Asia in January but accounted for less than about 0% of cases in the United States until May. By late June, it was estimated [...]
Key Questions Answered Q: What did researchers discover about the serotonin 5-HT1A receptor? A: They mapped how it activates different brain signaling pathways, offering insight into how mood and emotion are regulated at the molecular level. Q: Why does this matter for antidepressants and antipsychotics? A: Understanding this receptor’s precise behavior can help design faster-acting [...]
Light can behave in very unexpected ways when you squeeze it into small spaces. In a paper in the journal Science, Mark Brongersma, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, and doctoral candidate Skyler Selvin describe the novel way they have used sound to manipulate [...]
A new study in the academic journal Machine Learning: Health discovers that ChatGPT can accelerate patient screening for clinical trials, showing promise in reducing delays and improving trial success rates. Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Centre used ChatGPT to assess whether patients were eligible to take part in clinical trials and were able to identify suitable candidates [...]
A new peer-reviewed article argues that grapes deserve a place among today’s top superfoods. A recent article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry takes a closer look at the term “superfoods” and presents a compelling argument that fresh grapes deserve a top spot among them. The author, Dr. John M. [...]
Excessive levels of GABA released by astrocytes impair the brain’s ability to extinguish fear responses in PTSD, but a newly identified drug target offers promising hope for treatment. Many people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) continue to relive painful memories long after the actual threat is gone. Their brains seem unable to let go of [...]
To enable early diagnosis of acute illnesses and effective management of chronic conditions, point-of-care testing (POCT) technology—diagnostics conducted near the patient—is drawing global attention. The key to POCT lies in enzymes that recognize and react precisely with specific substances. However, traditional natural enzymes are expensive and unstable, and nanozymes (enzyme-mimicking catalysts) have suffered from [...]
Thanks to vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 in the period 2020–2024, 2.533 million deaths were prevented at the global level; one death was avoided for every 5,400 doses of vaccine administered. Some 82% of the lives saved by vaccines involved people vaccinated before encountering the virus, 57% during the omicron period, and 90% involved people aged [...]
Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto researchers are reporting that targeted RNA sequencing can detect clinically actionable alterations in 87% of tumors and provide decisive findings where DNA-seq either fails, returns no variant, or is not informative. Cancer treatments have seen tremendous improvements in recent years, in part due to highly specific targeting and diagnostic [...]
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have discovered a new state of quantum matter. The state exists within a material that the team reports could lead to a new era of self-charging computers and ones capable of withstanding the challenges of deep space travel. "It's a new phase of matter, similar to how [...]
