Predicting risk of heart failure for diabetes patients with help from machine learning

Heart failure is an important potential complication of type 2 diabetes that occurs frequently and can lead to death or disability. Earlier this month, late-breaking trial results revealed that a new class of medications known as SGLT2 inhibitors may be helpful for patients with heart failure. These therapies may also be used in patients with diabetes to prevent heart failure from occurring in the first place. However, a way of accurately identifying which diabetes patients are most at risk for heart failure remains elusive. A new study led by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and UT Southwestern Medical Center unveils a new, machine-learning derived model that can predict, with a high degree of accuracy, future heart failure among patients with diabetes. The team's findings are presented at the Heart Failure Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting in Philadelphia and simultaneously published in Diabetes Care.

Death toll from Spain floods rises to five

Three more people died as torrential rain and flash floods battered southeastern Spain, raising the death toll to five with the rising waters causing havoc for travellers and forcing 3,500 people from their homes, officials said Friday.

Health experts back treatment for kids with peanut allergy

Government health experts are urging approval of a treatment for children with life-threatening peanut allergies.

Illinois lawsuit filed against top e-cigarette maker

An Illinois teenager who fell ill with a lung disease after vaping for more than a year has sued a leading e-cigarette maker.

US finds contaminant in popular heartburn drug

U.S. health officials said Friday they are investigating low levels of a potentially dangerous contaminant in the popular heartburn medication Zantac and related generic drugs.

New vibration sensor detects buried objects from moving vehicle

Detecting landmines can be a challenging and slow process. Detecting them from a moving vehicle would make the process more speedy, but at the expense of accuracy.

Negative posts on Facebook business pages outweigh positive posts 2 to 1

There are more than 60 million business pages on Facebook and that number is from 2017. With those pages come scores of positive and negative posts generated by Facebook users. What researchers have seen is companies have very little control over what customers post, and negative posts can severely damage brands.

Microbes make chemicals for scent marking in a cat

Domestic cats, like many other mammals, use smelly secretions from anal sacs to mark territory and communicate with other animals. A new study from the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis shows that many odiferous compounds from a male cat are actually made not by the cat, but by a community of bacteria living in the anal sacs. The work is published Sept. 13 in PLOS ONE.

Ancient Australia was home to strange marsupial giants, some weighing over 1,000 kg

Palorchestid marsupials, an extinct group of Australian megafauna, had strange bodies and lifestyles unlike any living species, according to a study released September 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hazel Richards of Monash University, Australia and colleagues.

How IL-6 allows the immune response to develop for a key cell, the T follicular helper

The body's immune response fights against infectious disease, and it safeguards against future infections through vaccination. However, if the immune response dysfunctions and attacks the body itself, it can cause autoimmune disease. Thus, a healthy immune response balances an instant readiness to combat infecting viruses or bacteria, while maintaining benign surveillance of the body's own tissues.

Gemini observatory captures multicolor image of first-ever interstellar comet

The first-ever comet from beyond our Solar System has been successfully imaged by the Gemini Observatory in multiple colors. The image of the newly discovered object, denoted C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), was obtained on the night of 9-10 September using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea.

Scientists sharpen gene editing tool

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine scientists have fine-tuned their delivery system to deliver a DNA editing tool to alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. The improved "hit and run" system works faster and is more efficient.

NASA-NOAA satellite's night-time look at Tropical Storm Kiko

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over the Eastern Pacific Ocean in the early hours of Sept. 12 and grabbed a nighttime look at Tropical Storm Kiko.

GPM analyzes rainfall in Bahamas from potential Tropical Cyclone 9

As the Bahamas continue to recover from Category 5 hurricane Dorian, a new developing tropical cyclone is bringing additional rainfall to an already soaked area.

Nonphysician providers rarely interpret diagnostic imaging—except radiography, fluoroscopy

Although Medicare claims data confirm the increasing role of nurse practitioners and physician assistants (NPPs) in imaging-guided procedures across the United States, according to an ahead-of-print article published in the November issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), NPPs still rarely render diagnostic imaging services, compared with the overall number of diagnostic imaging interpretations. When NPPs do render diagnostic imaging services, though, said services are overwhelmingly radiography and fluoroscopy.

Undergraduate engineers advance shock wave mitigation research

A team of undergraduate engineers at UC San Diego has discovered a method that could make materials more resilient against massive shocks such as earthquakes or explosions. The students, conducting research in the structural engineering lab of Professor Veronica Eliasson, used a shock tube to generate powerful explosions within the tube—at Mach 1.2 to be exact, meaning faster than the speed of sound. They then used an ultra high-speed camera to capture and analyze how materials with certain patterns fared.

How microtubules branch in new directions, a first look in animals

Cell biologist Thomas Maresca and senior research fellow Vikash Verma at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say they have, for the first time, directly observed and recorded in animal cells a pathway called branching microtubule nucleation, a mechanism in cell division that had been imaged in cellular extracts and plant cells but not directly observed in animal cells. Details appear this month in the Journal of Cell Biology.

Developing therapeutic strategies for pregnant women with lupus

Systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic autoimmune disease commonly referred to as lupus or SLE, has been compared to volatile, unprovoked brawls within the body.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP tracks fire and smoke from two continents

Wherever fires are burning around the world NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite's Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) can track the smoke and aerosols. On Sept. 13, 2019, data from OMPS revealed aerosols and smoke from fires over both South America and North America.

New technology gives a glimpse of solar fuel generation in action

Electrochemical devices that use sunlight to generate fuel represent a promising means of harvesting sustainable energy; but currently, none are efficient enough for real-world applications. One of the main reasons for the slow development is the difficulty in observing and measuring what is happening at the liquid-catalyst interface—the location in the cell where the fuel-producing chemical reactions are taking place—without interfering with the processes.

Brain-inspired computing could tackle big problems in a small way

While computers have become smaller and more powerful and supercomputers and parallel computing have become the standard, we are about to hit a wall in energy and miniaturization. Now, Penn State researchers have designed a 2-D device that can provide more than yes-or-no answers and could be more brainlike than current computing architectures.

Same but different—unique cancer traits key to targeted therapies

Melbourne researchers have discovered that the key to personalised therapies for some types of lung cancers may be to focus on their differences, not their similarities.

'Soft tactile logic' tech distributes decision-making throughout stretchable material

Inspired by octopuses, researchers have developed a structure that senses, computes and responds without any centralized processing—creating a device that is not quite a robot and not quite a computer, but has characteristics of both. The new technology holds promise for use in a variety of applications, from soft robotics to prosthetic devices.

How fast is the universe expanding? The mystery endures

Scientists have known for decades that the universe is expanding, but research in the past few years has shaken up calculations on the speed of growth—raising tricky questions about theories of the cosmos.

Google will promote original reporting with algorithm change

Original reporting will be highlighted in Google's search results, the company said as it announced changes to its algorithm.

Death toll from Spain floods rises to three

The death toll from torrential rain and floods in southeastern Spain rose to three on Friday after a man drowned when his car became trapped in a tunnel, local authorities said.

Skin-crawling discovery: 'body farm' scientists find corpses move

An Australian scientist has proved that human bodies move around significantly for more than a year after death, in findings that could have implications for detectives and pathologists around the world.

Chaotic talks show challenge of reaching opioid settlement

For months, the judge overseeing national litigation over the opioids crisis urged all sides to reach a settlement that could end thousands of lawsuits filed by state and local governments.

'Demon oil' on the defensive over climate change

At the dawn of an era scientists have dubbed the Anthropocene, driven by human impact on the planet, the energy industry's four-yearly gathering was forced onto the defensive on climate change.

Forest fires destroying vital buffer against climate change

With fierce blazes raging in jungles from the Amazon to Indonesia, concerns are mounting about the impact as rainforests play a vital role in protecting the planet against global warming.

Indonesians choked by forest fire haze pray for rain

Hundreds of people held a mass prayer for rain in a smoke-filled Indonesian city on Friday, desperately hoping that downpours will extinguish forest fires and wash away the toxic haze covering wide swathes of the country.

Google Earth leads to remains of missing Florida man in lake

It took 22 years, but a missing man's remains were finally found thanks to someone who zoomed in on his former Florida neighborhood with Google satellite images and noticed a car submerged in a lake, authorities said.

Training surgeons like dogs, icky money win 2019 Ig Nobels

Training surgeons is as easy as training dolphins or dogs.

Abnormal gut bugs tied to worse cognitive performance in vets with PTSD and cirrhosis

A study involving military veterans with PTSD and cirrhosis of the liver points to an abnormal mix of bacteria in the intestines as a possible driver of poor cognitive performance—and as a potential target for therapy.

New topological insulator reroutes photonic 'traffic' on the fly

Topological insulators are a game-changing class of materials; charged particles can flow freely on their edges and route themselves around defects, but can't pass through their interiors. This perfect surface conduction holds promise for fast and efficient electronic circuits, though engineers must contend with the fact that the interiors of such materials are effectively wasted space.

Breaking the 'stalemate' in the most common soft tissue sarcoma in children

A phase 2 clinical trial has found that combining a molecular targeted drug called temsirolimus with chemotherapy shows promise in the treatment of rhabdomyosarcoma, the most common soft tissue sarcoma in childhood. The Children's Oncology Group trial was led by Leo Mascarenhas, MD, MS, Deputy Director of the Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Results were recently published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Battery icons shape perceptions of time and space and define user identities

New research from Cass Business School has found that battery icons on mobile phones shape how people view time and space, and how battery conservation practices define user identities.

More severe OSA leads to higher blood pressure in patients with resistant hypertension

In patients with high blood pressure resistant to treatment who also have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the more severe their OSA, the higher their blood pressure, according to new research published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Studying flames in microgravity is helping make combustion on Earth cleaner, and space safer

Understanding how fire spreads and behaves in space is crucial for the safety of future astronauts and for understanding and controlling fire here on Earth.

Engineers develop 'blackest black' material to date

With apologies to "Spinal Tap," it appears that black can, indeed, get more black.