A clinical study found that, for children who had a major stroke to the left hemisphere of their brain within days of their birth, the infant's brain was 'plastic' enough for the right hemisphere to acquire the language abilities ordinarily handled by the left side while also maintaining its own language abilities as well.

A new study compares insect herbivore damage of modern-era plants with that of fossilized leaves from as far back as the Late Cretaceous period, nearly 67 million years ago.

A new study describes agricultural intensification strategies to allow Brazil, the world's largest soybean exporter, to increase its soybean production by 36% in the next 15 years without further encroachment into the Amazonian rainforest. The study draws heavily upon the Global Yield Gap Atlas, an agronomic database covering more than 15 crops across 75 countries. If current trends continue,...

Clinical AI tools hold the promise to transform the practice of medicine, but lack of transparency in some tools is an ongoing challenge. One way to demystify black-box AI reasoning is the use of heat maps that 'explain' how an AI tool made a diagnosis based on a specific clinical image. A new study suggests that heat maps underperform human clinicians, are not ready for prime time and should be...

A new advance overcomes present limitations in spatial transcriptomics with a DNA nanotechnology-driven method called 'Light-Seq.' Light-Seq allows researchers to 'geotag' the full repertoire of RNA sequences with unique DNA barcodes exclusive to a few cells of interest. These target cells are selected using light under a microscope via a fast and effective photocrosslinking process, and their...

Gray whales that migrate along the West Coast of North America continued to decline in number over the last 2 years, according to a new assessment. The population is now down 38 percent from its peak in 2015 and 2016, as researchers probe the underlying reasons.

Chronic, constant stress can increase lifetime risk of heart disease and stroke, but a new survey reveals regular mealtime with others could be a simple solution to help manage stress.

AI-powered recruitment tools that claim to remove discrimination from hiring are a growing market. These AI tools reduce race and gender to trivial data points, and often rely on personality analysis that is 'automated pseudoscience', argue researchers in a new paper. The academics have teamed up with computing students to debunk this use of AI by building a version of the kinds of software...

New research based on data from 18 countries concludes that adults with better mental health are more likely to report having spent time playing in and around coastal and inland waters, such as rivers and lakes (also known collectively as blue spaces) as children. The finding was replicated in each of the countries studied.

The Salton Sea, California's most polluted inland lake, has lost a third of its water in the last 25 years. New research has determined a decline in Colorado River flow is the reason for that shrinking.

Some smart home technology could help curb opioid overdose. A pilot study showed that a set of noninvasive home sensors could provide accurate information about overnight restlessness and sleep problems for people recovering from opioid use disorder. Disrupted sleep is a major complaint of people trying to quit highly addictive opioids. Although methadone is effective at reducing cravings and...

Researchers have discovered a novel, non-invasive way to measure blood flow to the brains of newborn children at the bedside -- a method that has the potential to enhance diagnosis and treatment across medicine, a new study suggests.

A multinational team of researchers in Europe report the discovery of a new antifungal antibiotic named solanimycin. The compound, initially isolated from a pathogenic bacterium that infects potatoes, appears to be produced by a broad spectrum of related plant pathogenic bacteria.

A new study provides the best evidence to date that scientists overall are most innovative and creative early in their careers. Findings showed that, on one important measure, the impact of biomedical scientists' published work drops by between one-half to two-thirds over the course of their careers.

Investigators have examined the microbiome of pancreatic tumors and identified particular microorganisms at single cell resolution that are associated with inflammation and with poor survival. According to the researchers, these microorganisms may be new targets for earlier diagnosis or treatment of pancreatic cancer, which is the fourth leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the...

A new study details the genetic diversity of Streptococcus pneumoniae within individual infants, including hidden multidrug-resistant and virulent strains. The findings suggest that the detection of such resistant variants is only possible using a population deep sequencing (PDS) approach and that their presence may be due to individuals being treated with antibiotics. The research highlights the...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is an imposing foe for gene therapy. Formed of cells wedged tightly together, the BBB keeps toxins and pathogens that may be present in the blood from entering brain tissue, but it also keeps out potential treatment for diseases that affect the central nervous system (CNS). Researchers have discovered some delivery vehicles -- known as adeno-associated viruses (AAV)...

Considering underlying health issues more comprehensively when a patient has a fracture could better identify those at higher risk of poor health outcomes.

Researchers have developed a deep learning algorithm that can teach itself to learn features which can then be used to find similar cases in large pathology image repositories.