A recent study conducted by Yale School of Medicine researchers recently published in the journal Cancer Discovery has uncovered a possible explanation for why this occurs. According to an analysis of a phase 2 study involving 24 patients with endometrial cancer and the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, the Yale team pinpoints a specific mechanism of faulty DNA repair in tumors as a key factor in determining patient outcomes. “We wanted to understand why some patients respond better than others to immunotherapy,” said co-corresponding author Ryan Chow, an M....

While the Rochester Cloak relied solely on lenses, a newly developed system combines a different type of lens array combined with a digital scanning and processing technique that increases the range of angles for which it works. The Rochester researchers have shown a proof-of-concept demonstration for such a setup, which is still much lower resolution than the nearly perfect imaging achieved by the Rochester Cloak lenses. But with increasingly higher resolution displays becoming available, the “digital integral cloak” they describe in their new Optica paper will continue to improve....

For decades, scientists have known that the effects of global climate change could have a devastating impact across the globe, but Harvard researchers say there is now evidence that it may also have a dramatic impact on public health. In the July 27 issue of Science, a team of researchers led by James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, warns that a newly discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the United States could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer....

Some of the “biggest and baddest” black holes around are buried under thick blankets of gas and dust. These monsters in the middle of galaxies are actively devouring material, but their hidden nature makes observing them a challenge. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) recently caught a glimpse of five of these secluded beasts. While hidden from view from most other telescopes, NuSTAR can spot them by detecting the highest-energy X-rays, which can penetrate through the enshrouding gas and dust....

An MIT study identifies ways that lawyers could make their written documents easier for the average person to read. Legal documents, such as contracts or deeds, are notoriously difficult for non-lawyers to understand. A new study from MIT cognitive scientists has determined just why these documents are often so impenetrable. After analyzing thousands of legal contracts and comparing them to other types of texts, the researchers found that lawyers have a habit of frequently inserting long definitions in the middle of sentences....

Adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were more than three times as likely as those without the disorder to have an ischemic stroke later in life.Adults with OCD should maintain a healthy lifestyle, including not smoking, exercising, and managing a healthy weight, to help prevent stroke.Health care professionals should closely monitor patients with OCD for increased risk of ischemic stroke. Adults who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were more than three times as likely to have an ischemic stroke later in life compared to adults who do not have OCD, according to new research published today (May 27, 2021) in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association....

A new risk-stratification tool that can accurately predict the likelihood of deterioration in adults hospitalized with COVID-19 has been developed by researchers from the UK Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium (known as ISARIC4C). Researchers say the online tool, made freely available to NHS doctors from today (Friday 8 January 2021), could support clinicians’ decision making — helping to improve patient outcomes and ultimately save lives. The tool assesses 11 measurements* routinely collected from patients, including age, gender, and physical measurements (such as oxygen levels) along with some standard laboratory tests and calculates a percentage risk of deterioration, known as the ‘4C Deterioration Score’....

Computers are an indispensable part of our daily lives, and the need for ones that can work faster, solve complex problems more efficiently, and leave smaller environmental footprints by minimizing the required energy for computation is increasingly urgent. Recent progress in photonics has shown that it’s possible to achieve more efficient computing through optical devices that use interactions between metamaterials and light waves to apply mathematical operations of interest on the input signals, and even solve complex mathematical problems....

Now, a new tool created by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (HMS) provides a solution to this problem in the form of a set of bacterial genes that have been engineered to detect and record changes in the growth of different populations of bacteria over time in the guts of living mice with single-cell precision, and can serve as a platform for complex, synthetic-biology-based diagnostics and therapeutics for a variety of applications in the gut....

A typical cancer cell has thousands of mutations scattered throughout its genome and hundreds of mutated genes. However, only a handful of those genes, known as drivers, are responsible for cancerous traits such as uncontrolled growth. Cancer biologists have largely ignored the other mutations, believing they had little or no impact on cancer progression. But a new study from MIT, Harvard University, the Broad Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital reveals, for the first time, that these so-called passenger mutations are not just along for the ride....

Humans acknowledge that personality goes a long way, at least for our species. But scientists have been more hesitant to ascribe personality—defined as consistent behavior over time—to other animals. A study from the University of California, Davis is the first to document personality in golden-mantled ground squirrels, which are common across the western U.S. and parts of Canada. The study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour, found the squirrels show personality for four main traits: boldness, aggressiveness, activity level, and sociability....

Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), challenge the accepted wisdom on wetting and drying phase behavior. The authors provide a firm conceptual framework for tailoring the properties of new materials, including finding super-repellant substrates, such as expelling water from windscreens, as well as understanding hydrophobic interactions at the length scale of biomolecules. When a liquid such as water is repelled from a solid substrate, the drop created exhibits a large contact angle....

Researchers recently discovered that a common space weather phenomenon on the outskirts of Earth’s magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, has much larger repercussions for Venus. The giant explosions, called hot flow anomalies, can be so large at Venus that they’re bigger than the entire planet and they can happen multiple times a day. “Not only are they gigantic,” said Glyn Collinson, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland....

“No one would argue against the fact that sports lead to better physical fitness, but we don’t always think of brain fitness and sports,” said senior author Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (Brainvolts). “We’re saying that playing sports can tune the brain to better understand one’s sensory environment.” Athletes have an enhanced ability to tamp down background electrical noise in their brain to better process external sounds, such as a teammate yelling a play or a coach calling to them from the sidelines, according to the study of nearly 1,000 participants, including approximately 500 Northwestern Division I athletes....

There’s a growing awareness that meat consumption is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and reducing it is crucial for a sustainable future. If only there was a healthy alternative food source that can replace meat protein while also being environmentally friendly. There is. Katharina Henn, a Ph.D. from the Department of Food Science, has completed her research on an environmentally and climate-friendly food source. Pulses, which include beans, peas, and lentils, are dried and edible seeds from legume plants that offer a nutritious and healthy superfood option....

Scientists are increasingly seeking to discover more about quantum entanglement, which occurs when two or more systems are created or interact in such a manner that the quantum states of some cannot be described independently of the quantum states of the others. The systems are correlated, even when they are separated by a large distance. Interest in studying this kind of phenomenon is due to the significant potential for applications in encryption, communications, and quantum computing....

Scientists in the Quantum Dynamics Unit at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) are looking at something similar, but their research is at a much smaller scale. They’re running experiments to see how the motion of electrons is impacted by fluid. This study was published in Physical Review Letters. Professor Denis Konstantinov, who runs the Unit, demonstrated the concept with a piece of wire. “If we run an electric current through a piece of wire, then we know that the electrons will move from one end to the other....

Such wide spectral coverage by a single antenna is impossible with a traditional receiver system, and would require multiple systems of individual antennas, amplifiers, and other components. In 2018, Army scientists were the first in the world to create a quantum receiver that uses highly excited, super-sensitive atoms — known as Rydberg atoms — to detect communications signals, said David Meyer, a scientist at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory....

NASA | A View From The Other SideA number of people who’ve seen NASA’s annual lunar phase and libration videos have asked what the other side of the Moon looks like, the side that can’t be seen from the Earth. This video answers that question. The imagery was created using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data.

Across the Arctic, snow melted earlier and more completely than in recorded history. Similar to the way ice loss exposes dark water to the sun’s radiant heat, melting snow allows the exposed ground to heat up, adding to the Arctic’s warming. This extra heat retention is affecting the polar jet stream, effectively altering it and causing mid-latitude weather patterns to linger. It’s possible that this might also be prolonging the North American drought, which is the worst since the Dust Bowl in the 1930s that was fueled in part by climate change in the Arctic....