Greens sue to compel ESA action on desert wildflower
Citing the presence or possibility of nearby mines, solar energy farms and geothermal projects, the Center for Biological Diversity called on the federal agency to make a final determination as to whether the plant warrants listing as threatened or endangered.
According to the lawsuit, the FWS missed a decision deadline established under the Endangered Species Act.
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'The Fish and Wildlife Service has delayed long enough,' said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the CBD. 'We're suing to make sure that these special little plants get the protections they need before it's too late.'
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Medscape
30 minutes ago
- Medscape
Emotional Response to Music May Enhance Memory Specificity
Music that evokes an emotional response may influence the specificity of memory recall, new research suggests. Investigators found that participants who were shown a series of images of everyday items before listening to music were more likely to remember only general details of the photos if they experienced a more emotional response to the music, while those who had a moderate emotional response were more likely to recall specific details. Stephanie L. Leal, PhD 'Most people think that emotional things are better remembered, but they actually aren't. It's just parts of the memory that are affected, not the whole memory,' co-investigator Stephanie L. Leal, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology & Physiology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), told Medscape Medical News . 'One size doesn't fit all when it comes to music and memory.' Interestingly, familiarity with a song was not associated with either general or detailed memory. 'We played the same songs for everybody, but importantly, everyone responded differently. So I think personalization and taking individual preferences into account is going to be important for interventions,' said Leal, who is also director of the Neuroscience of Memory, Mood, and Aging Laboratory at UCLA. The findings were published online on July 23 in The Journal of Neuroscience . Memory Complexities As previously reported by Medscape Medical News , previous research has shown that both music appreciation and participations are tied to improvement in executive function and memory. For this study, researchers wanted to dive into the complexities of memory, including the possible connection between music and differing aspects of memory. 'We tend to remember more of the gist of something emotional that happened and not as much of the details. So we wanted to see if music could boost certain parts of memory but not all of the parts,' she said. Many previous music studies have included older individuals, especially those with dementia. For this project, investigators chose instead to assess a younger population because they wanted to use their data as a 'baseline' before moving on to further research in groups that are older and/or have impaired conditions such as depression or Alzheimer's disease, Leal said. 'We wanted to see what happens in healthy people first and then apply it to other populations,' she said. The study included 130 healthy undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 35 years from Rice University, Houston. During the initial phase of memory formation — called the 'encoding' phase — each participant was shown 128 images of common household objects and asked to choose whether the object should be considered as an indoor or outdoor item. Participants then donned headphones and listened to 10 minutes of classical music pieces, ambient soundscapes, or silence while they filled out questionnaires about their medical history. After the music ended, participants spent about 20 minutes filling out additional questionnaires, including a rating of the music or sounds they heard on the basis of emotional arousal, positive or negative reaction, or familiarity. They then viewed a set of 192 images that included some they hadn't seen before (foils) and others that were identical (targets) or similar (lures) to the photos viewed earlier. Participants were asked to classify an image as old or new, allowing the researchers to measure target recognition — a measure of general memory — or lure discrimination — a measure of detailed memory. Big-Picture Recall General recall of the images was greater among those who experienced either low or high emotional response to music than among those who experienced moderate changes in emotional arousal ( P for both < .001). More detailed memories were reported by those who reported only a moderate emotional response to music than those who reported a low or high emotional response ( P for both < .001). There were no significant associations between memory of the images and song familiarity or whether a song was happy or sad. 'Overall, music modulated both general and detailed memory, but individual differences in emotional response were crucial — participants listened to the same music yet responded differently,' the investigators wrote. 'These findings suggest that music interventions may not uniformly enhance memory, emphasizing the need for personalized approaches in treating memory and mood impairments,' they added. The research suggests that a high emotional response may cloud details more than a moderate response. 'Yes, the idea is that if something is very emotionally arousing, maybe we don't want to remember the details associated with it. Maybe we just want to remember that general feeling or the bigger impact of that event, whether it's positive or negative,' Leal said. 'Maybe we just want to take the 'big picture' from that.' Early Days Commenting on the findings for Medscape Medical News , Daniel L. Bowling, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California, noted that the study 'follows the general trend' of research that breaks down large concepts, such as memory, into specific features. Daniel L. Bowling, PhD Bowling, who is also director of the Music and Brain Health Lab at Stanford, was not involved with the current study. 'This showed different levels of responses to music that were differentially related to varying types of memory that you might want to target,' Bowling said. For example, if a clinician's purpose is cognitive training, with more of an emphasis on details, 'you might want more moderate levels of [emotional] arousal. But if you want more big-picture stuff, which could be critical when asking people about their life, then higher levels of arousal may be better,' he added. He noted that because the researchers used almost a 'pretreatment,' with music used before the recall task, it would be interesting to know if using such a pretreatment before taking a test could possibly improve performance. There are interventions, some of which Bowling is involved with, that are looking at supporting arousal and attention during studying. A controlled study comparing these things and looking systematically into effects on different types of memory would be helpful, 'but we're really at the beginning of figuring all of this stuff out,' he said. Although the current study has some limitations and needs to be replicated, 'any kind of talk toward systematic effects of different musical parameters or emotional modeling starts to help us bring this into the scientific-medical realm. And that's a real strength here,' Bowling concluded.
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Federal climate website goes dark as Trump administration promises policy reset
The federal website created to host the U.S. national climate assessments, congressionally-mandated and peer-reviewed reports that cover the effects of climate change in the U.S. has been inaccessible so far this week. A Fox News Digital review found that the websites for the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the pages for the national assessments were down on Tuesday without any links or referrals to other websites. The White House said the climate-related reports will be located within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) going forward. However, searches for the assessments did not bring anything up on the NASA website, according to The Associated Press. The U.S. national climate assessments, of which five have been created to date, are published every four years. Some scientists argue the reports save money and lives, AP reported. "It's critical for decision-makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is," University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs said in a statement. "That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States." In March, President Donald Trump's energy chief vowed a reversal of "politically polarizing" Biden-era climate policies as the new administration approaches climate change as "a global physical phenomenon." "I am a climate realist," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at S&P Global's CERAWeek conference in Houston in March. "The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world." In February, the Trump administration similarly revamped agency websites to be rid of climate change-filled content, amid a widespread rebranding of federal departments from content deemed as not aligning with Trump's agenda. The White House and NASA did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Medscape
an hour ago
- Medscape
OCT Bests Angiography Guidance for Improving PCI Outcomes
An 'optical biopsy' of intravascular plaque during stenting is more effective at reducing the rate of restenosis or thrombosis in people with moderately or severely calcified lesions than angiography guidance, a substudy of the ILUMIEN IV clinical trial has found. Gregg Stone, MD 'We found that in those calcified lesions there was a marked benefit of optical coherence tomography [OCT] guidance compared with angiography guidance in improving long-term outcomes, specifically in reducing the 2-year rate of target vessel failure and serious adverse cardiovascular events, as well as stent thrombosis,' study leader Gregg Stone, MD, director of academic affairs for Mount Sinai Heart Health System in New York City, told Medscape Medical News. Results of the analysis were published in the European Heart Journal . Substudy Results The study included 2114 patients from the ILUMIEN IV clinical trial, which compared OCT- and angiography-guided percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The participants in the substudy had a single treated calcified lesion in a major epicardial vessel. On angiographic guidance, 1082 patients (51.2%) had a moderately or severely calcified lesion and 1032 (48.8%) had no or mild calcification. Using angiographic guidance alone, the rate of target vessel failure at 2 years in the moderately or severely calcified lesions was 93% greater than that in the lesions with no or mild calcification (9.7% vs 5.2%). However, with OCT guidance, the 2-year rates of failure were similar in both groups, 6.8% in the moderately and severely calcified lesions and 7.7% in the no or mildly calcified lesions. With OCT guidance, the 2-year failure rates were 38% lower compared with angiography guidance in the patients with moderately and severely calcified lesions: 6.8% vs 9.7%. The differences in the patients with no or mild calcification were not statistically significant, the substudy found: 7.7% with OCT guidance and 5.2% with angiographic guidance ( P = .01). The three major predictors of vessel failure after PCI, Stone said, are minimal stent area and a major dissection or untreated disease at the edge of the stent. 'The real advantage of optical coherence tomography is that it provides a much more accurate picture than angiography in determining the minimal stent area or in detecting edge-related dissections or significant untreated disease,' he said. The 2024 European Society of Cardiology guidelines recommend intravascular imaging as a Class IA indication for anatomically complex lesions, Stone noted; but those guidelines do not specifically call out calcified lesions. 'That's the major gap this study fills,' he said. The American College of Cardiology, in conjunction with the American Heart Association and the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention, this year issued a Class 1A recommendation for intracoronary imaging, including OCT, during stenting of the left main artery or for other complex lesions. 'Directly Relatable to the Clinic' While OCT operators need a high level of skill to perform the imaging and interpret the results, the substudy findings are 'quite generalizable to all settings,' Stone said. 'These findings are directly translatable to the clinic, but there's always more fine tuning that can be performed,' he added. That refining would include clarification of the characteristics of calcified plaque on OCT that are at highest risk for target vessel failure, and possibly the need for an advanced strategy of lesion preparation, using either lithotripsy, atherectomy or cutting or scoring balloons, he said. Several calcium scoring classifications for OCT have been proposed, but none has been clinically validated. 'That would be a rich area for future research,' Stone said. Clinical Context Yader Sandoval, MD The new data underscore the value of intravascular imaging, and add to the data supporting OCT specifically, for characterizing plaque in percutaneous coronary intervention, Yader Sandoval, MD, an interventional cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and cochair for the Center for Coronary Artery Disease at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, Minneapolis, told Medscape Medical News . 'This analysis of ILUMIEN IV complements and further adds that this is the right direction that intravascular imaging not only provides superior technical results but it improves outcomes for these patients,' Sandoval said. The substudy clears up a finding from the original ILUMIEN IV study that, while OCT guidance resulted in a larger minimal stent area than angiography guidance, it did not necessarily reduce target vessel failure at 2 years. A strength of the ILUMIEN IV trial was the 'meticulous core laboratory data analysis' used, along with its global scope, he said. The substudy, also reported using OCT guidance, took about 16 minutes longer per procedure than angiography (67.7 minutes vs 51.5 minutes) and required longer fluoroscopy duration and greater total radiation dose, Sandoval said, which could raise questions about the practicality of OCT for this indication. 'The main message is, you are better characterizing calcium and therefore better preparing the lesion and providing a better technical result, better area, and better results for the patient,' he said. 'That comes with the investment that the procedure is little more complex, and you have to do a better job of preparing the lesion. And to me these data elegantly show that.' Abbott Vascular provided funding for this study. Stone reported receiving speaking fees from Abbott. Sandoval reported serving as a consultant, advisory board member, and a speaker for Abbott.
