Author: healthadmin

smile. Frown. Children’s attention-grabbing facial expressions can reveal important clues about their mental health. A new study from Binghamton University, State University of New York, suggests that depression may affect how children respond to emotional facial expressions, such as happy or sad faces. The study also found that these attention patterns differed depending on whether the child had a family history of depression. Researchers at Binghamton University’s Mood Disorders Institute are focused on understanding how depression develops in childhood and adolescence. They are investigating how factors such as family history and emotional experiences contribute to future risk of depression. By…

The Trump administration is defending Elon Musk in a lawsuit over claims that his artificial intelligence company xAI is polluting residential neighborhoods in northern Mississippi. The Justice Department late Monday directed a federal court to throw out the case.The lawsuit was filed by the NAACP in April after xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech allegedly installed dozens of methane gas turbines without air permits to power a data center in South Haven, Mississippi. The lawsuit claims these turbines emit toxic pollutants in violation of the Clean Air Act and asks a judge to block xAI from operating the machines.The Justice…

In 2011, a brief but devastating downpour hit Copenhagen, inundating parts of the Danish city with more than 5 inches of rain in one day. This storm caused more than $1 billion in damage. It also spurred city-wide transformation. Officials spent the next decade implementing a matrix of green space and designing stormwater infrastructure to absorb future flooding. Other cities around the world, from Hong Kong to New York, have adopted similar green-gray approaches to controlling urban flooding. But as the aptly named “sponge city” movement grows around the world, experts say major challenges are preventing urban sponges from realizing…

New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences This provides evidence that depressed patients experience visible changes in their hedonic expectations, making it difficult for them to enjoy rewarding activities. Scientists have discovered that a simple smartphone game can detect this change in just three minutes, offering the potential for a new way to quickly assess disease severity. Depression is a widespread illness that affects millions of people worldwide. Despite the prevalence of this disease, doctors primarily rely on checklists of symptoms rather than specific measurements of underlying cognitive processes to diagnose symptoms. A key feature of…

Researchers have discovered that a drug previously developed at UCLA to help heart tissue repair itself after a heart attack may also help repair and regenerate kidney tissue. The drug, called AD-NP1, was recently approved by the FDA for Phase 1 clinical trials in humans and works on heart tissue by blocking proteins that interfere with healing and prevent the internal organs from fully recovering. Researchers now find that blocking this protein in kidney tissue accelerates repair after kidney injury in mice. The new discovery is cell stem cellsbased on years of research in UCLA cardiovascular scientist Arjun Deb’s lab.…

Cancer cells have an excellent ability to adapt to stress. Once damaged by treatment, they often find new ways to survive, develop drug resistance, and progress the disease. Researchers at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, led by Dr. Noel Warfel, have discovered one such escape route. Their study, published in Cancer Letters, reveals a previously unknown mechanism that helps prostate cancer cells evade treatment and points to potential strategies to overcome their resistance. The study focuses on PIM1, a protein that promotes prostate cancer cell proliferation, survival, and treatment resistance. Scientists have spent years developing drugs that target PIM1, but these…

Researchers at the University of Houston School of Pharmacy have discovered an unexpectedly simple strategy for improving the performance of mRNA vaccines and gene therapy drugs: the addition of salt. The findings, published in the journal Small, solve one of the biggest challenges facing modern genetic medicine: delivering fragile therapeutic materials to the right places inside cells. We introduce salt-loaded lipid nanoparticles as a novel and widely applicable design principle for gene delivery. What’s interesting about this is that it doesn’t require inventing entirely new materials and can significantly improve delivery efficiency. ” Fanfei Meng, Assistant Professor and…

Between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first three months of 2026, telehealth usage increased by 10.1% across the United States, according to a new report from Fair Health. Telehealth utilization, measured as a percentage of medical claims, increased from 5.01% of medical claims in Q4 2025 to 5.51% in Q1 2026. The relative increases were 12% in the Midwest, 11.8% in the Northeast, 9% in the South and 8.1% in the West, according to Fair Health data. The percentage of patients billed for telehealth also increased nationally and in all four regions from the fourth quarter of 2025…

Experiencing abuse or neglect in childhood can increase the risk of intimate partner violence later in life. New research published in Lancet Community Health Europe reveals that childhood trauma changes a person’s mental health and personality, increasing their vulnerability to relationship abuse. These psychological changes account for much of the increased risk and suggest new ways to protect survivors. Previous research has shown that people who faced abuse or neglect as children are three to six times more likely to experience intimate partner violence as adults. To understand why this pattern exists, researchers looked at the psychological characteristics that link…

Romantic partnerships often serve as a buffer against loneliness for most people, but this protective relationship does not universally extend to asexual people. New research data shows that being in a romantic relationship is not associated with lower current feelings of loneliness among asexual people, challenging a long-held assumption in psychology. The study was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Julia Zopporat, a social psychologist at the Amsterdam University Medical Center, led a research team that investigated how romantic relationships and happiness are correlated across different sexual orientations. The researchers wanted to test two cultural assumptions that govern relationship…