International Research Awards on New Science Inventions

White evangelical Christians have resisted getting vaccinated against COVID-19 at higher rates than other religious groups in the United States. A new study by Yale researchers provides evidence that persuading these vaccine holdouts to get their shots has only gotten more difficult. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , combines two survey experiments testing the effectiveness of various persuasive messages in shifting white evangelicals’ attitudes about vaccination. The first survey was conducted in October 2020, while Donald Trump was president and before the COVID-19 vaccines were approved for use in the United States, and the second occurred in May 2021, several months after people started getting jabs. In the first survey, a message appealing to people’s sense of community interest, reciprocity, and the potential embarrassment of getting others sick after refusing the vaccines proved most effective in persuadi...

Two decades after his retirement, US basketballer Michael Jordan still holds the record for the highest paid athlete of all time, netting a cool $2 billion, demonstrating his global status in sport. But what was is it about the star player that put him head and shoulders above his peers? A new study led by University of South Australia PhD student Michael Rogers reveals why coaches believe ‘game intelligence’, work ethic and competitiveness – traits that Jordan possesses in spades – are far more important than physical fitness in determining success on the basketball court. Rogers surveyed 90 basketball coaches from 23 countries to find out what factors – other than peak fitness – are used to recruit players for the big league. “We found 35 performance indicators that coaches considered important and at the top of the list were psychological attributes,” Rogers says. “Coaches look for players who are competitive, have a strong work ethic, are excellent communicators, good teamma...

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a new biomarker to identify which patients with brain tumors called glioblastomas — the most common and malignant of primary brain tumors — might benefit from immunotherapy. The treatment could extend survival for an estimated 20% to 30% of patients. Currently, patients with glioblastoma do not receive this life-prolonging treatment because it has not been fully understood which of them could benefit. “This is an important breakthrough for patients who have not had an effective treatment in the cancer drug arsenal available to them,” said Dr. Adam Sonabend, the senior/corresponding author of this study, and associate professor of neurosurgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine brain-tumor neurosurgeon. “It might ultimately influence the decision on how to treat glioblastoma patients and which patients should ...

In 2020, an estimated 6.7 million Californians provided care for a family member or friend with a serious or chronic illness or disability. According to a study  by the  UCLA Center for Health Policy Research,  44.4% of those caregivers reported experiencing some level of financial stress due to their roles, and 13.5% experienced a physical or mental health problem due to their caregiving work. In the study, which used data from the center’s 2020 California Health Interview Survey, UCLA researchers write that caregivers received little financial support for their work: One in four caregivers in California provided 20 or more hours of care per week, but only 1 in 11 received payment for that work. And according to  AARP research,  people who care for a family member spend thousands of dollars per year of their own money on caregiving costs. “Because they provide a significant portion of care for people with chronic needs and disabilities, it is vital that we...

Researchers have developed a new approach to machine learning that ‘learns how to learn’ and out-performs current machine learning methods for drug design, which in turn could accelerate the search for new disease treatments. The method, called transformational machine learning (TML), was developed by a team from the UK, Sweden, India and Netherlands. It learns from multiple problems and improves performance while it learns. TML could accelerate the identification and production of new drugs by improving the machine learning systems which are used to identify them. The results are reported in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Most types of machine learning (ML) use labelled examples, and these examples are almost always represented in the computer using intrinsic features, such as the colour or shape of an object. The computer then forms general rules that relate the features to the labels. “It’s sort of like teaching a child to identify different a...

The avocado is considered a nutrient-dense plant food. In a novel study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing the potential health effects between families that consumed a low allotment of avocados (three per week) and families that consumed a high allotment (14 per week) over six months. All families were of Mexican descent. They found that the high avocado allotment families self-reported lower caloric consumption, reducing their intake of other foods, including dairy, meats and refined grains and their associated negative nutrients, such as saturated fat and sodium. The findings, published in the November 11, 2021 online issue of  Nutrients , may offer insights into how to better address the burgeoning public health issues of obesity and related diseases, particularly in high-risk communities, said the authors. The s...

Ovarian cancer patient Carol Giandonato admits to being apprehensive when her oncologist told her he wanted to make her cancer cells turn fluorescent green. “Am I going to glow in the dark? Will I be green?” she asked him. Her surgeon explained that when viewing the cancer site, the cancerous lesions would be illuminated with near-infrared light during surgery. Using this approach, her surgeon was able to find a hidden tumor that would have otherwise gone undetected. Giandonato was one of the first patients for a new drug designed to help surgeons find ovarian cancer tumors and cells — that imaging agent was just approved Monday (November 29) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The drug will be released with the brand name Cytalux. It was invented at Purdue University and will be released by On Target Laboratories. The imaging agent is delivered via an IV injection between one and nine hours before the surgery for ovarian cancer. The fluorescent imaging agent binds to the...

Today’s quantum computers are complicated to build, difficult to scale up, and require temperatures colder than interstellar space to operate. These challenges have led researchers to explore the possibility of building quantum computers that work using photons — particles of light. Photons can easily carry information from one place to another, and photonic quantum computers can operate at room temperature, so this approach is promising. However, although people have successfully created individual quantum “logic gates” for photons, it’s challenging to construct large numbers of gates and connect them in a reliable fashion to perform complex calculations. Now, Stanford University researchers have proposed a simpler design for photonic quantum computers using readily available components, according to  a paper  published Nov. 29 in  Optica . Their proposed design uses a laser to manipulate a single atom that, in turn, can modify the state of the photons via a phenomen...

A new study by researchers at the  Kinsey Institute at Indiana University  found that people who reported higher rates of anxiety and depression — but not loneliness — were more likely to use emerging digital sexual technologies, or “sextech,” including sending sexually explicit images or videos and visiting erotic webcam sites. The researchers said this suggests that individuals with impaired mental health may use sexual technologies to experience temporary relief from their psychological distress. Alexandra Marcotte , lead researcher on the study and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, said new technologies — including virtual reality, artificial intelligence and shared online environments — already provide opportunities to explore new forms of social interaction and sexual fulfillment. “As the global need for innovative mental health resources and interventions increases, these emerging sexual technologies may provide relief for people with mental h...

A silicone device that can change skin tissue into blood vessels and nerve cells has advanced from prototype to standardized fabrication, meaning it can now be made in a consistent, reproducible way. As  reported in Nature Protocols , this work, developed by researchers at the  Indiana University School of Medicine , takes the device one step closer to potential use as a treatment for people with a variety of health concerns. The technology, called tissue nanotransfection, is a non-invasive nanochip device that can reprogram tissue function by applying a harmless electric spark to deliver specific genes in a fraction of a second. In laboratory studies, the device successfully converted skin tissue into blood vessels to repair a badly injured leg. The technology is currently being used to reprogram tissue for different kinds of therapies, such as repairing brain damage caused by stroke or preventing and reversing nerve damage caused by diabetes. “This report on how to ex...

Quick Read Since 2016, we have monitored levels of data sharing and usage, and in this, our sixth survey, we asked about motivations as well as perceived discoverability and credibility of data that is shared openly. 76% of survey respondents believe they currently get too little credit for sharing data 52% of survey respondents said funders should make the sharing of research data part of their requirements for awarding grants 73% of survey respondents strongly or somewhat support the idea of a national mandate for making research data openly available “Researchers largely want to share their data, but the current system fails to support or adequately reward them for doing so and we are still a long way from a world where it is the norm to share fully-curated data”, argues Ginny Barbour of Open Access Australasia in her essay, How open data can help validate research and combat scientific misinformation , part of the 2021 State of Open Data report from Figshare, Digital...

Imagine you could cure cancer by targeting one tiny gene. Imagine that same gene occurred in every major cancer, including breast, prostate, lung, liver and colon. Imagine that the gene is not essential for healthy activity, so you could attack it with few or no negative side effects. Cancer biologist Yibin Kang has spent more than 15 years investigating a little-known but deadly gene called MTDH, or metadherin, which enables cancer in two vital ways — and which he can now disable, in mice and in human tissue, with a targeted experimental treatment that will be ready for human trials in a few years. His work appears in two papers in today’s issue of Nature Cancer. “You can’t find a drug target better than this: MTDH is important for most major human cancers, not important for normal cells, and it can be eliminated with no obvious side effects,” said Kang, Princeton’s Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology and one of the principal investigators of the Princeton Br...